Place Entry Six

Carpe Diem

March 12, 2010
Today it’s pouring. This is the rain of tropical storms where nine inches can fall in one day. The campus is getting ready for spring break. Most students have gone. I’m looking down the hill at the lake as I often do lately. My pants are already soaked from my ankles to my knees. I imagine what I’ll feel like the rest of the day if my blouse were also soaked, so I bend my umbrella to block the rain pellets that are shooting sideways from the wind. A retention pond obstructs the view of the lake. It was built to serve residence halls four years ago. The large, ugly, brown ditch was carved out of the long, green field that used to introduce the lake like a long, lush carpet. At times, the ditch makes me feel like someone pulled the doors shut to the lake.

Today the ditch is full- it looks like a pond in front of the larger Lake Jovita. It filled up in no time. In Florida, only an inch or two of rain can fill an entire area with several inches of water. Florida averages 4-½ feet of rain a year. Out of this rainfall, only one inch soaks into the ground and stays. All this rain I see will either run off or return to the sky.

Three male students run toward the man-made pond and dive in. Two of the guys bob in the water, and just their heads appear as they float around like the American coots in the lake. The third guy scrambles out of the side of the ditch on hands and knees. As he gets to his feet, he turns his body around toward the ditch, jumps, and grabs one of his bent knees-- a half-cannon ball dive back into the water. All is blurry and wet and gray as if we were standing in the middle of a cloud with plummeting rain ensuring the thick, moist air would hang on. The students’ clothes and bodies are darkened. Like birds, they look the same and play the same within the new pond.

I’m reminded of night-swimming as a teen before my fear of feeding sharks or beer-buzz lack of judgment. Growing up in Maryland, I used to walk around Washington, D.C. at night with friends. The city was dark and quiet, and the memorials were lit with floodlights. Like a postcard. One night we sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial while a solitary man played saxophone beside the large, stone president. Mike was missing from the stairs, and when we looked down into the large, rectangular pool in the center of the mall, we found him swimming and diving within the water. Backstroking and backflipping within the Washington pool. I’m sure this was illegal.

I wonder how long I’ve been concerned with where I submerge myself in water. I learned in Florida that sharks feed at night near the shoreline. I also learned that amoebas in warm lake water can cause encephalitis and death in small children. A friend died jet skiing in a lake, slow judgment from drinking.

The sky is gray water. Falling fast and thick. If I leaned my head back, I could drink, and I long to quench more than my thirst in water without intimate knowledge of what’s underneath.

Prompt Entry Six

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land -- by the Oceans passed.
Transport -- by throe --
Peace -- by its battles told --
Love, by Memorial Mold --
Birds, by the Snow.
--Emily Dickinson

I’ve been thinking lately how I’m intrigued by opposites. How feelings can occur simultaneously, like sadness and joy. How diametric concepts can define one another, like peace and war. And how colors complement one another on a painter’s wheel, like green and red.

I’ve spent my life hovered against the east coast. So, in my mind, the west is opposite. Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, and Florida have been my homes, and I’ve visited every state along the east coast. Somehow this makes me feel out of balance. I’ve never lived more than 300 feet above sea level, so I desire the height of mountains. My landscape is dense with green, so I desire earth that is red. I know the taste of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, so I thirst for the Pacific. I’m not alone in my thoughts to head west. It’s a well-worn cliché. My best friend had wanderlust for the west and settled briefly in Arizona. It was then she discovered she had to live near water to be happy. Rather than move back to Florida, she moved to Pittsburgh, and in her apartment that overlooks the three rivers, she’ll reminisce of Sedona, but will never live out there again. My fantasy of out west has always been conflicted. I grew up with a pull to the west because my father moved there alone when I was young. I think of California and the west as a place that seduced my father. It is a place that seduces me, too.

Strange that it is where land is dry that I would be drawn to feel quenched. When I took a trip last year to Denver for work, I took the only free time that week, nine hours, to find mountains or at least red landscape. A snowstorm caused me to drive south on route 25 instead of north. In the distance I saw a cluster of red rocks. At first they were like all things that we keep at a distance. The large spaces between that cause indifference. As the rocks grew before me, I was magnetized to them. I spent the day on the paths as if protected by the orange-red rocks. They seemed to reach and point toward the sky. With the exception of wind that whispered and whistled, all was quiet. In the silence, I felt fathered. Like when what is not spoken speaks the loudest and our thoughts echo back with wisdom.

I plan to head west more to experience the environment more fully, beginning this summer. In Pueblo traditions, the direction of east represents the mind, and the direction of the west represents the physical. Maybe I just need to transform what has been in my mind for so long and make it physical.

Place Entry 5

Today my fourteen-year-old son and I went to Lake Jovita’s public dock to check out if the cattails were too thick to allow us to launch kayaks. The kayaks were still at home in the shed, but today we only planned. We feel winter ending and sometimes it gets too hot too fast. Kayaking is one thing we’ve got to grab before the summer heat beats down. We saw signs of spring on our way. A large field that used to be filled with rows of orange trees was clear, allowing full view of the lake. Today the browned field was dotted with a red-rusty wildflower; the stalks looked like rose-colored wheat leaning from the slight breeze. The wild magenta phlox is another promise along the roadside that spring is near. After the coldest winter on record in fifty-two years, we’re more excited at these signs than ever.

A small, wooden dock jets out over the lake just over the zone of the shoreline, where animal and plant life hide and provide food. I’ve come to expect the raft of coots that seem to always be partying at this lake. Today they’re hovering at the shoreline, as is a teenage boy fishing on the dock. He casted a line over and again two feet from the brush.

“I’ve been here all mornin’,” he told us with a deep southern twang that told me his folks have lived in this area for awhile. “Nothin’s bitin’.”

The coots aren’t dunking as frequently as they usually do when the wind is stronger. They whine and bark, with an occasional shallow dive. One swam in a complete circle, a 360 degree turn that made the black bird look like a spinning domino as he revealed two large, white markings on his behind.

Overhead, the sky was periwinkle blue. Clouds were barely there, like curtain sheers draped sideways across the sky. A bird flew solo overhead, too high for me to identify—I couldn’t recognize the silhouette of its wings. A slight wind blew the hair off my shoulders. I was reminded of how wind that smells like nothing is also sweet somehow. I was cooled but not chilled, and my skin drank the sun’s rays until I was warmed and quenched.

Aside of the dock, two boys, the same age as my son, hauled a canoe through the opening in the cattails. Their father directed them in Mexican, and they glided into the middle of the lake. The father joined us on the dock with a fishing line and a loaf of white, enriched bread in a plastic bag. The teenager told the father of the canoeing boys how he hadn’t caught a thing on his line all morning. The Mexican gentleman rolled a piece of the soft, white sandwich bread between his forefinger and thumb and stuck it on his hook. He cast the line swiftly, and we heard a whoosh pass our ears before the breaded hook plopped into the water. Within minutes the man pulled up a baby blue gill on the line. Again, he hooked a bread ball, cast the line, swished and plopped. One after the other, the father pulled up gill after gill.

“I’ll start fishin’ like dat,” the teenager said with wide eyes and an impressed smile.

I couldn’t see the father’s sons or the canoe. “I fish in the sea like that,” he told the lonely kid. “I’m fishing for bait.”

I asked him what he’d like to catch in this lake. He told me he catches bass this way – 20 – 25 inches long. He took the line with the baby blue gill hung on the hook. He tossed it over his right shoulder and swung the line like a cowboy in a rodeo. After the fish swung around on the circling line three times, he flung it as if he were lassoing something in the lake. The teenager began rolling the bread and placing it on his own hook: “I’m gonna catch me some bass with you.”

My son and I left the dock and wished the two of them luck. I realized as we walked away that I’d never taken Dominic fishing. I asked my son the last time he went fishing with his Dad. “I was seven or eight, I think,” he said. “I love fishing.”

Along with kayaking, we’ll be trying out fishing here this spring.

Prompt Entry Five

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink

Florida has the most coastline, seven hundred miles, than any other state. It used to seem odd to me that we had a water shortage when water could be seen almost anywhere. There are 7,700 lakes in Florida. Along with lakes, there’s the Gulf, the Atlantic, springs, rivers, and ponds.

When I first moved to Pasco County, I met a native of the area who showed me two lakes that flourished throughout his childhood. One was a dry ditch, a huge bowl of brown, dead grass. Another held a small, muddy pool of water about forty percent of the circumference of what should have been the lake. He told me lakes were “drying up” because Pinellas County, where Clearwater and St. Petersburg Beaches are, pumped Pasco’s aquifer for their needs. Pinellas caters to the tourism industries. The population, golf courses, and resort water fountains all demanded water that the county couldn’t provide, so they would pump water from the Pasco aquifer where many lakes dried up or became so low that wildlife would diminish considerably. If too much water is pulled from the aquifer, Gulf water is also pulled into the aquifer and then salination contaminates it for drinking. It takes a lot of rain water to refresh the aquifer. The practice of grabbing water from the county was controversial, and citizens pressured local governments. Eventually the water pumping was regulated, and three neighboring counties – Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas—shared the pumping and use by forming Tampa Bay Water. The lakes filled again and I’ve not again seen them dried up as I did ten years ago.

Almost a decade later, Pasco residents had to protect their aquifer again from outsiders. A landfill company had a bid to build a large landfill near the Green Swamp, one of the largest protected wetlands in the state. A large part of the swamp is located in Pasco County and is directly linked with the aquifer. The water from the aquifer would have been contaminated from the landfill. Citizens pressured local and state governments, and last year the bid was finally rejected for the last time, so we think.

Pasco residents have had to protect their water sources from outside risks. Community strengths are loud and organized voices to protect the local aquifers. I believe the community should also show strength in a preventative way. Recycling became available at the same time as the landfill was rejected. The landfill was close to being a reality, and this was partly because we are producing too much trash. Preventative measures should be thought of before environmental threats move in so closely. Residents should be more at the forefront of sustainability and resourcefulness. Tampa Bay Water diffused and regulated the water problem in neighboring counties, but we are still under mandatory water restrictions throughout the year. In light of this, Florida yards should not demand so much water. Florida lawns and landscaping often flourish with non-native plants that are not drought-tolerant. Their high-maintenance needs demand a water supply. An alternative is Florida native plants. Not only do they preserve our native species and provide habitat for native birds, insects and other animals, but many are drought resistant and do not demand our water.

I attempted to replace non-native plants with a native, Florida-friendly yard lately. I found nurseries, Home Depots, Walmarts did not carry native plants. The closest nursery to the eastern part of my county was a one hour drive. I was led there by their elaborate website that listed native varieties in pages with price lists. When I arrived, the one-city-block nursery had one small corner dedicated to expensive, native varieties. I walked out of the nursery with three wild coffee plants, a $20 expense. The Florida Native Plant Society discourages uprooting and replanting native plants found in the woods and forests, which would have been my next step. I’ve had a note on my calendar for the last month for the March 13th native plant sale over on the coast. I’ll head over next weekend to find more native plants. This shouldn’t be so hard, though.

We need both local and big box businesses to get on board with providing native plants for Florida friendly landscaping to reduce our water needs.