Kayaking through the mangroves of Key Largo & Florida sagas

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Florida Bay Outfitters runs kayak tours, rents kayaks out of 104050 Oh 305-451-3018.
For the middle- to older kayak person who has let a few years of inactivity pass by, guide David C. Williams, a former NY Port Authority supervisor is the guy. He took early buyout, just before 9/11/2001, having lost a friend in the 1993 bombing, whick killed a friend. Leading kayak tours in the Keys in winter anf at Bar Harbor in Maine during the summer months, he knows the scene
Enr at Garden Cove Road, we kayaked across the Intercostal Waterway/ North Sound Creek to Rattlesnake Key, watching for fast moving fishermen in speed boats in the deep channel – the crossing is shallow, and unless you move well right, you can run into seagrass; guides are advised.
Moving through a mangrove alley (whay doesn’t Jimmy Buffet mention them in songs), we circled the Key and , back on the Creek, continued to the Eights, a passage through really quiet romantic mangrove creeks, sweet and shady, wonderful reflections, a few snappers and snakes and herons to disturb you. Mangrove survived because there are so few storms that tear up the island-building red mangrove colonies – their seedlings drop in the water as fully developed little trees, floating upright to find an anchoring place. The same reason makes for the sandsdune absence, not enough wave action to gtind up the rocks.


Kayaking through the Ratlesnake

To keep up to snuff -learn the truth about Florida, this writer has , over the years, developed a faith in Floridian fiction writers. Starting with John D. MacDonald the Harvard MBA (1916-86) whose Robin Hood-ish salvage consultant Travis McGee in 22 books exposed real estate tycoons, agricultute exploiters, ecology narural resource wasters, medical frauds and stock market manipulators. His successor, Miami Herald writer Carl Hiassen continued with the themes.

In The Green Ripper (1979) McGee’s sidekick, the economist Meyer (G. Ludwig Meyer, PHD), owner of the boat named John Maynard Keynes expressed despair about the world’s economy, observing that a debt of about $2T, owed from government to government and banks, with no chance that it will ever be paid back. There is not enough productive capacity in the world, plus enough raw materials to provide maintenance of plant plus enough coverage to even to keep up with mounting interest. Asked whether the debt can be written off, he offered that all the major world currencies would collapse, trade will cease and without the mechanical-scientific apparatus running, the Earth would not support its four billion people. Hydrocarbon utilization heats , houses and clothes the people. There will be fear, hate, ange, death, the new barbarians, plague and poison and the New Dark Ages. Sane people and sane governments are trying to scuffle a little more time and breathing space, and if no one pushes the wrong button, we have at worst five, at best twelve more years . Allover the world people are suddenly coming to realize the fact of reduced expectations, that their children and grandchildren will have it worse than they did , and want to blame somebody, hoot and holler. Pearl Harbor again.
This Club of Rome doomsday scenario , with growth of population of a million and a third every week, came during the Carter inflation, and is raising its ugly head ever since. The populatin growth estimate is nearly correct, to our current 6.5B. The miracle of China and new oil finds have postponed doomsday but the trade imbalance deepens.

The rest of The Green Ripper prophesies a rise of domestic terrorists, with a religious ideology and foreign participants, and Travis McGee uncharacteristically executes all of them, perpetuating the author’s theory that the justice sytem is to slow, and vigilantism is a necessity. This is not too far from the 21st Century.

Carl Hiaasen is in the same territory, with his hero Skink a marsh-dwelling ex-Florida governor. Phony repairmen frofiting fron the hurricanes are his targets. John W. Hall’s Thorn is another environmentalist hero, fighting phosphate factoties destroying Tampa Bay area. Sugar and Everglades everyone knows, but the little recornized Crgill and IML Agrico conglomeration product, Mosaic, generates ¾ of US and and ¼ of the world’s phosphate and potash. They may have stopped in the Peaace River area, concentrating on Argentina.

Travis McGee’s boat is Busted Flush and it resides in Slip F-18 in the Bahia del Mar marina in fort Lauderdale. We will catch up with Jonathon King and other ecoterrorists later.

.

Beaches of the Florida Keys

Our Florida Keys paradise at Moon Bay, Key Largo

To get away from the Winter blahs, colds, coughs and SAD infection, I would prescribe a stay in the Florida Keys. I am not a doctor, but a few winters ago, in 2005,suffering from a diagnosed lung infection, we caught a quick plane reservation and flew down. It was a hot January, and we spent two weeks, swimming in the pool and the Forida Bay from our marina, walking three miles a day in the Key Largo Park and staying warm at night. Two weeks later, back in New York, the doctor declared the infection to be gone.

Good health and Internet access is what I need for my vacations, and that we have. Also two bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, cable TV, an oversized living room (sitting ther in the afternoon, with the sun shining through the vertical blinds, is sheer delight), two Ethernet yellow cables for His and Her laptops (bring), swimming pool right outside our stone-walled private outdoors deck, and glorious sunsets , to be viewed from the marina side, or a cocopalm-thatched tiki out on the cement pier. Pleasant neighbors, snowbirds from US, Canada and Europe, or locals who come from Miami for a fesh air and wekend rest and fishing, with or with with or without boats. And palms, and flowers.

Our unique unit has breakfast table for six on its private outdoors patio, shaded by three palm trees . A unique private 12x12 garden, with wo huge palms, also has ever-blooming red hibiscus and pink Bougainvillea bushes, crowding their blooms into the bedroom window, until we trim them (the trimmed branches, in water, decorate our outdoors table). A blue-blooming plumbago and evergreens fill more of the pea-rock garden, which we built some years ago with 40 bags of dirt and coral rock.

To view our condo in MoonBay colony, Key Largo, open (or paste into your browser) http://www.floridakeysrentalsandsales.com/VacationRentalsCondos.htm#Weekly%20Condos to view the entire MoonBay . Click on Vacation Rentals, then MoonBay, then Unit B101, then pictures. For general and rental info call Barbara Wodka at Florida Keys Rentals & Sales Corp, 1-888-451-1050. Tere is also easy ground-floor access to private parking space, pool, tennis, and an easy walk to the marina (fabulous sunsets from the tiki hut). The unit particularly suitable for people with children and those with walking difficulties. A restaurant is 400 yards away, also a nearby supermarket (one mile) and diving/snorkeling the John Pennekamp State park coral reefs (three miles).