Place Entry Two

Southern Magnolia

I first came to Lake Jovita with paper and pencil ten years ago when I arrived at Saint Leo as a student. My full time job at the school supported my education, and this dual role didn’t allow much time for studying. On my lunch hour, I’d head toward the lake by way of a field which was flanked on the right with a thick forest of trees untouched since the community was founded over a hundred years ago. To the left of the field was an open view of the approaching lake. The lakeside was often breezy, and I’d sit on a bench that was angled to allow a view of the entire heart shaped lake. A large, southern magnolia tree shaded the bench, and between the breeze and the sun’s warmth, I’d soon lie down and fall into a twilight sleep. Not much studying was done when the feeling overtook me, and the Abbey bells that sound at the top of the hill every 15 minutes allowed me keep track of time in a relative way. At times, work stress would cause a friend and me to sit on the dock and fish for a lunch hour. A couple from the adjacent town of Dade City would catch turtles from the lake and throw the netted victims in the back of their old, dented pick-up truck.

Changes at the school and in my life kept the lake out of my mind. The school built lakeside student housing with an adjacent retention pond that sits in the foreground of the lake, altering the view from the top of the hill. The Abbey posted signs that fishing was prohibited. School departments held lakefront barbeques where co-workers discussed work in the past, work in the present, work in the future.

While walking back from Lake Jovita yesterday, I walked through the student parking lot that used to be the long field. The forest of trees seemed untouched from ten years ago, the same thickness and virgin quality of thriving plants within it. The woods were thick and moist, flourishing with marsh ferns. Wild coffee decorated the forest floor as far deep as I could see. These knee-high shrubs displayed glossy, evergreen leaves with clusters of red, currant-sized berries. It’s the most beautiful sight I saw that day, and I thought about how much I love what remains the same.

Prompt Entry Two

Constancy

We moved to upstate New York when I was twelve. I thought the move would be our last. My older brother, mother, and new step-dad left Maryland, and said good-bye to relatives that I loved. It was the first and only time I lived near mountains. I felt invigorated about my new surroundings, and my new step-dad, Jerry, was enthusiastic. He was usually very quiet, Apollonian in his ways, and spoke with brevity. Jerry’s words were concise from clear thoughts, and he never wasted speech. Conversations with him were like our time living in New York—brief, punctuated with calm silence, and profound.
I had cried too much at their wedding – each guest who lingered and hugged in the receiving line had to witness my tears. My sorrow has been immortalized in the wedding photographs. I had longed for my father who had moved to California years before, never to return. My tears flowed like the water I later saw trickling in crevices of the gorges near New York’s Finger Lakes. My cheeks glistened with wetness like the slate walls of the deep canyon, although my eyes in New York were now dry. Jerry had lived in this area with his first family years before. He knew of secretive and beautiful places to explore. In Maryland, he spent free time at the driving range or methodically cleaned the car and house windows so that we always had a clear view. In New York, however, he took us on car rides on unnamed roads through Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains, to each of the five Finger Lakes, or along the Susquehannah River. My first visit to a gorge at Watkins Glen is carved into my memory. A slate grey path meandered around steep, cavernous cliffs. No protective railing divided visitors on the path from the two-hundred foot drop that led to the bottom. A stone, mock railing, which stood lower than my knee, didn’t prevent the feeling of being on the edge of cliff. Jerry walked between me and the drop, which allowed me to look down into the subterranean stream that formed the cavern or look ahead at the jagged slate wall that increased in size around the corner. He didn’t hold my hand, but every once in a while he’d ask, “’ya okay?” with a small smile and with a hand on my shoulder. I felt I was dropped inside the earth, to view something ancient and solid. The consistent flow of water over soft rock had created this beautiful place, and where harder rocks lay over softer ones, waterfalls flowed, decorating the gorge like sheer window curtains. Jerry’s silent presence didn’t distract from the sound of falling water, but seemed to highlight the dramatic effect. I sensed that day he would be as constant and steady as that stream and that our family would be solid with his presence. Thirty years later, I hear my children calling him Grampy. We often talk about those two years in New York, and we both still dream out loud to each other about living near mountains.

Prompt Entry One

Neighborhood Environment

Growing up, my landscape was manmade. I walked on paved roads and sidewalks and rode my bike through my neighborhood whose main road was lined with crabapple trees, each equidistant from one another. In this environment, I never felt a lack of nature, finding it on occasion within a fixed landscape. I had not yet hiked in the mountains or kayaked in a Florida spring, activities that I love today. Only through reflecting back do I realize some of the few organic landmarks that punctuated my childhood. In spring or summer, I would climb in the crabapple trees, and in winter, “skate” in my boots along a semi-frozen creek behind my best friend’s house, risking a fall through the shallow ice-water if my boots cracked the surface like a spoon tapping on a crème brulee. For the most part, though, the landscape was all about neighborhoods, neighbors, and going to a store or restaurant for food. Because of this environment, I learned early the importance of community, and how our families and friends can mark the days and seasons as profoundly as the earth’s rotation on its axis or revolution around the sun.
My family was originally from Revere, a small town with a large Italian-American population, just a few miles north of Boston where the previous generation immigrated from Sicily and Avellino. When we moved to Maryland, my Aunt, Mother, and Grandmother packed up the culture from their hometown and unpacked it in the new neighborhood, where neighbors and friends would knock once, and enter into the back door which led to a seat at the kitchen table. Often, my grandmother was standing at the stove, stirring in a large pot with a faded wooden spoon. The house would fill with a pungent, fresh smell of tomatoes and penny royal simmering on the stove or fresh dough with egg yolks. Sometimes the kitchen table was covered with strips of drying fettuccine laid out on a white, cotton tablecloth or draped over the kitchen chairs. Visiting neighbors would use fold-out chairs that my Aunt stored against the family room wall to accommodate frequent guests.
One of my fondest memories was the drive into Baltimore with my Aunt to Trinacria’s Italian grocery store. From this monthly trip, we’d stock up on all things Italian: roasted red peppers, macaroni in various shapes, provolone and Romano cheeses, and olive oil. Most of our meals were at the kitchen table with the exception of getting dressed up to go into Baltimore or Washington, D.C. to an Italian Restaurant.
I was hardly aware of the natural world in Maryland because all things were about people, cooking and eating. I moved from Maryland to Florida when I was nineteen. I didn’t realize the importance of community and neighbors until it was stripped from me, and I was dropped into the Tampa area. Although I grew up going to stores and restaurants, something was missing in Florida, and all seemed shallow. Soon I despised the consumer culture, but this feeling changed when I moved to the country and became familiar with the natural Florida landscape. I learned to kayak in the clear, 72 degree springs of Northern Central Florida, and my children and I gardened and raised chickens while living out in the natural Florida landscape at the end of a dirt road. I became attuned to the rhythms of the day and seasons from raising chickens and roosters, gardening, and bird-watching.
I’ve never found or been able to recreate the community I experienced growing up. I’ve replaced this social environment, in one sense, with a connection to my natural environment. In my opinion, the most fulfilling way to live is to incorporate community with the natural environment.

Place Entry One

Jan 17th 3:00pm
Strong as the Wind

On the weekends, Lake Jovita is a quiet place without a lot of activity, especially in winter. Florida air is usually still and heavy with too much moisture. The sun beats down on all things, authoritatively. From this oppression, the wise animal world hides in the shade at mid-day. Today is unusually windy, and as I walk down the hill that leads to the lake, the wind picks up stronger and louder. The position of the sun indicates it’s about 2:00. Its rays frost the west shoreline of the lake as if the sun laid a sheet of gold leaf to gild the water. As the cumulous, graying clouds cover the sun, the gilded water turns to stainless steel, muting the vibrant colors of the landscape. The wooden dock is moaning and complaining at the undulating waves. I sit down in lotus position with my back against the dock post. I rock with the dock from the waves, and the laps against the base of the dock are soothing, like gentle splashes and plops from moving in a hot bath. The wind has stirred the lake, creating a feast for coots and soaring birds. Coots, which are duck-like the way they swim and bob in the lake, float in a raft of twenty or thirty others. One dives under the waves and another follows. Like ladles in a pot of soup, they grab small fish and plants that the wind has stirred up. I’m reminded of my brother and I jumping over and diving beneath waves as kids in the Atlantic Ocean, as I watch the kuk-kuk-ing coots doing the same. The howling wind stifles the sounds of the Abbey bells that tell me it must be three-o-clock. Overhead, a falcon is flying with a small fish hanging out of his mouth. On the East side of the lake, a bald eagle circles, peering below in the churning lake for his dinner. The cattail grass that skirts the lake is bending in the wind. The blades that have turned brown shake like pompoms, sounding like distant, polite applause at a symphony. The tips of the grass are pointing toward the shore, all reaching forward as if trying to escape the lake. I leave against my desire, suddenly aware of the time. As I walk up the hill, I pass the library windows where I usually sit to study, the best indoor location for a view of the lake. Lake Jovita seems quiet when observed through the window, and I realize it’s been seven years since I sat on the dock with pencil and paper.

Winter at Lake Jovita

I can't really talk about how refreshed I feel in this weather. The last two weeks of cold air with lowered humidity leaves me invigorated and energetic like the horses and calves I see trotting in the roadside fields. If I appear wide-eyed and content, I risk ostracism for my insensitivity. Yesterday was the coldest morning in Central Florida so far this winter. Here in Dade City, the dawn temperature was nineteen degrees. Again, I hear on the radio and from the community that landowners are concerned about losing their orange crops. It will take a week to determine the damage. I don't know what it's like to rely on the weather for my livelihood in such a fragile way. A mere 15 degree difference can cause an orange grower to lose everything he or she has worked for. The last devastating freeze in this county was 20 years ago when the 1989 prolonged freeze altered the citrus industry. Dade City’s Lykes Pasco Plant, the largest orange juice plant in the world at the time, closed down. A man whose groves were worth three million dollars couldn't save his trees from that freeze, and overnight his business was worth negative $200,000.
Behind Saint Leo Abbey, I walked down the hill that leads to the heart-shaped lake. The orange trees are lined up as if parading lakeside. It’s a balmy thirty-five degrees, and as I walk through the grove, flanked by orange-decorated trees, the browned, dried grass crunches underneath my boots like tortilla chips. The golden spheres look healthy, and I notice the leaves which are usually a deep, evergreen, are curling and blackening at the edges. The sky, like azure milk glass, is cloudless. Its complementary color to the oranges could be found on a painter’s palette. The Saint Leo Abbey monks own these trees, and each winter I buy 5-6 lb bags of Hamlin oranges for one dollar. I hope I'll get to juice them all winter.