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By Scott Gilbertson" height="524" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach01.jpg" width="960"></amp-img></p> -<p>I was lucky; I grew up by the ocean. Surprisingly, or at least surprising to me, I never reached that point where I took it for granted. When something is right there for so long sometimes it blends into the background noise and you stop noticing it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least complacency. But I've never felt complacent about my proximity to the sea. It's the one thing I miss living in Athens. How could you not? It's too big a thing to take for granted; it's were we came from. And it remains the one of the last true boundaries between the known and the unknown.</p> -<p>Boundary lands are always the most interesting places -- the seashore, the edge of timberline, where the city starts to give way to the country. These are the fringes of our world, the peripheral edges of our collective vision where everything is less certain, but more possible, more inviting. Boundaries are the gray areas where life feels most real, most truly momentary because the boundaries themselves are ever in flux. </p> -<p>The seashore is also just plain fun. Lounging in a hammock strung between two palm trees, sipping cocktails and enjoying the sunshine seems to be high on most people's list of things they think they would do if they won the lottery. </p> -<p>I've spent a good bit of my time traveling either at or around the seashore, from <a href="/writing/thailand/">Thailand</a> to <a href="/writing/india/">India</a>, to <a href="/writing/nicaragua/">Nicaragua</a> and <a href="/writing/indonesia/">Indonesia</a>. The ocean may well be the only constant there is when you're traveling. I've been to plenty of places simply to see what the beaches were like -- <a href="/2005/nov/20/fish-story/">Goa, India</a>; <a href="/2011/jun/23/best-snorkeling-world/">Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia</a>; <a href="/2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/">Little Corn Island, Nicaragua</a> and plenty more I haven't written about.</p> -<p>These days though I'm less inclined to travel somewhere solely for the promise of nice beaches because I found St. George Island. </p> -<p><amp-img alt="Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" height="508" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach02.jpg" width="400"></amp-img>I stumbled upon St. George Island a couple years ago. St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live (9 with babies). There are better places if you're looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it's nightlife you're after. But if you're looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you'll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is among the best boundary land in the world. </p> -<p>I first arrived here largely by accident. My wife and I tagged along on an invitation to share a cheap beach house someone else had rented. We came back a year later. And again six months after that. And we hope to be back for a fourth visit before the year is over.</p> -<p>St. George is more than just a nice beach though, it's a little backwater in time. It's a little slice of the world as it used to be, the world I grew up in, before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. St. George doesn't offer anything like that. There's little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp, snapper and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. There are some condos, but the two motels are rundown affairs that look like backwater holdouts from the early 1980s. There's nothing about this place that even hints at the world of resorts and all-inclusive packages. And that's the way I like it.</p> -<p>It's entirely possible that by the time the mid-summer tourism peak rolls around at Independence Day St. George Island is unbearably crowded with north Florida rednecks, but, having only been here in the shoulder months of May, September and October, I have trouble picturing it. For the most part there's rarely been another person on the beach, let alone a crowd, when we're here. The surprising thing though is that by all rights it <em>should</em> be crowded, even in the off season, but it's not.</p> -<p>St. George is long and narrow, some thirty miles from one end to the other, but rarely more than a half mile across. It's part of a barrier island chain, along with Dog Island and St Vincent Island, that provide shelter from the Gulf seas and help create the Apalachicola Bay. </p> -<p><amp-img alt="Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" height="320" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach03.jpg" width="550"></amp-img></p> -<p>Roughly a third of the island, the entire western end, is closed off to a private, gated community. To karmically balance that the entire eastern half of the island is protected from development by the <a href="http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/">Dr. Julian Bruce St. George Island State Park</a>. If we weren't fortunate enough to know someone willing to rent us a beach house on the cheap, we'd be <a href="http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/activities.cfm#12">camping here</a>. Even if you're not camping the park is worth a visit. Hardly anyone seems to stray much beyond the beach parking lots so if you walk for a bit you'll easily find miles of beach you'll only have to share with a few plovers, sandpipers and the occasional Great Blue Heron standing atop the dunes behind you.</p> -<p>One day I rented a crappy bike and rode out through the state park to the very eastern tip of the island where a small channel of water separates St. George from the uninhabited Dog Island. Aside from a few fishermen clustered around the leeward side of the channel, there was no one around. </p> -<p>St. George was once little more than rolling sand dunes covered in sea oats and tall grasses. Dunes still occupy the central portion of the island, particularly here in the state park where the dunes have been spared development. On the windward side the dunes turn to beaches which look out on the Gulf of Mexico. St. George acts as a barrier island for Apalachicola Bay, but most of the time there's little to protect against. The Gulf is typically about as calm of waters as you could hope for. Of course when the storms come, they really come. Hurricanes have been rearranging St George ever since it was created, even splitting it into two islands and then bringing it back together again. The fishermen ended up liking that extra entrance to the bay. What was originally the doing of a hurricane is now a properly dredged channel, though it's certainly within a storm's power to change that again.</p> -<p><amp-img alt="Great Blue Heron, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" height="311" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/great-blue-heron-stgeorgeisland.jpg" width="550"></amp-img></p> -<p>I spent some time exploring the dunes along the east end, watching the herons standing tall and silent while Laughing Gulls cried in the air overhead. A pair of ospreys made lazy circles above the cluster of fishermen and pelicans occasionally dive bombed into the sea to pluck out an unlucky fish. After a while it got hot in the wind-sheltered, sun-baked sand dunes so I walked back to the shore for a swim before making the questionable decision to ride back along the beach. Florida sand is sugary fine stuff, not particularly supportive when you put a fair amount of weight on it. There were stretches where I could ride, but I ended up walking a good few miles as well, stopping for a swim whenever I got tired. </p> -<p>Back at the state park entrance I briefly detoured across the island to the leeward shore. The back side of the island is a totally different beast. Here the dunes give way to actual soil which supports a band of pine and palmetto forest that eventually opens up to wide, reed-filled tidal marshes. The marshlands are interspersed with what is locally known as hammocks -- slightly raised bits of porous humus capable of sustaining of Live Oaks, Cedars and the occasional Cypress tree, small deciduous islands is a sea of reeds. The marshes overlook the <a href="/2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/">oyster fields of the Apalachicola Bay</a> and, on a clear day, the mainland of Florida two or three miles away. Apalachicola Bay is so shallow it's tempting to think you could walk back to the mainland, though I've no idea why you would want to do that. </p> -<p>There's not much to St. George, but it's all I need. Were it not for the need to earn the bio-survival tickets necessary for obtaining food and shelter in this country I would rarely leave this place. A house with a view of the water, perhaps a boat for fishing and getting around the bay, and, to my mind anyway, you'd be well set for life. In the mean time, I'll take what I can get of St. George.</p> - </div> - </article> -</main> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches.html deleted file mode 100644 index 48132db..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,380 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html -class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> - -<head> - <title>All The Pretty Beaches - by Scott Gilbertson</title> - <meta charset="utf-8"> - <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> - <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> - <meta name="description" - content="St. George Island Florida offers some of the best white sand beaches in the world. 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By Scott Gilbertson" class="picwide" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach01.jpg"/></p> -<p>I was lucky; I grew up by the ocean. Surprisingly, or at least surprising to me, I never reached that point where I took it for granted. When something is right there for so long sometimes it blends into the background noise and you stop noticing it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least complacency. But I’ve never felt complacent about my proximity to the sea. It’s the one thing I miss living in Athens. How could you not? It’s too big a thing to take for granted; it’s were we came from. And it remains the one of the last true boundaries between the known and the unknown.</p> -<p>Boundary lands are always the most interesting places — the seashore, the edge of timberline, where the city starts to give way to the country. These are the fringes of our world, the peripheral edges of our collective vision where everything is less certain, but more possible, more inviting. Boundaries are the gray areas where life feels most real, most truly momentary because the boundaries themselves are ever in flux. </p> -<p>The seashore is also just plain fun. Lounging in a hammock strung between two palm trees, sipping cocktails and enjoying the sunshine seems to be high on most people’s list of things they think they would do if they won the lottery. </p> -<p>I’ve spent a good bit of my time traveling either at or around the seashore, from <a href="/writing/thailand/">Thailand</a> to <a href="/writing/india/">India</a>, to <a href="/writing/nicaragua/">Nicaragua</a> and <a href="/writing/indonesia/">Indonesia</a>. The ocean may well be the only constant there is when you’re traveling. I’ve been to plenty of places simply to see what the beaches were like — <a href="/2005/nov/20/fish-story/">Goa, India</a>; <a href="/2011/jun/23/best-snorkeling-world/">Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia</a>; <a href="/2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/">Little Corn Island, Nicaragua</a> and plenty more I haven’t written about.</p> -<p>These days though I’m less inclined to travel somewhere solely for the promise of nice beaches because I found St. George Island. </p> -<p><img alt="Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" class="postpic" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach02.jpg"/>I stumbled upon St. George Island a couple years ago. St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live (9 with babies). There are better places if you’re looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it’s nightlife you’re after. But if you’re looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you’ll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is among the best boundary land in the world. </p> -<p>I first arrived here largely by accident. My wife and I tagged along on an invitation to share a cheap beach house someone else had rented. We came back a year later. And again six months after that. And we hope to be back for a fourth visit before the year is over.</p> -<p>St. George is more than just a nice beach though, it’s a little backwater in time. It’s a little slice of the world as it used to be, the world I grew up in, before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. St. George doesn’t offer anything like that. There’s little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp, snapper and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. There are some condos, but the two motels are rundown affairs that look like backwater holdouts from the early 1980s. There’s nothing about this place that even hints at the world of resorts and all-inclusive packages. And that’s the way I like it.</p> -<p>It’s entirely possible that by the time the mid-summer tourism peak rolls around at Independence Day St. George Island is unbearably crowded with north Florida rednecks, but, having only been here in the shoulder months of May, September and October, I have trouble picturing it. For the most part there’s rarely been another person on the beach, let alone a crowd, when we’re here. The surprising thing though is that by all rights it <em>should</em> be crowded, even in the off season, but it’s not.</p> -<p>St. George is long and narrow, some thirty miles from one end to the other, but rarely more than a half mile across. It’s part of a barrier island chain, along with Dog Island and St Vincent Island, that provide shelter from the Gulf seas and help create the Apalachicola Bay. </p> -<p><img alt="Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/stgeorgeislandbeach03.jpg"/></p> -<p>Roughly a third of the island, the entire western end, is closed off to a private, gated community. To karmically balance that the entire eastern half of the island is protected from development by the <a href="http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/">Dr. Julian Bruce St. George Island State Park</a>. If we weren’t fortunate enough to know someone willing to rent us a beach house on the cheap, we’d be <a href="http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/activities.cfm#12">camping here</a>. Even if you’re not camping the park is worth a visit. Hardly anyone seems to stray much beyond the beach parking lots so if you walk for a bit you’ll easily find miles of beach you’ll only have to share with a few plovers, sandpipers and the occasional Great Blue Heron standing atop the dunes behind you.</p> -<p>One day I rented a crappy bike and rode out through the state park to the very eastern tip of the island where a small channel of water separates St. George from the uninhabited Dog Island. Aside from a few fishermen clustered around the leeward side of the channel, there was no one around. </p> -<p>St. George was once little more than rolling sand dunes covered in sea oats and tall grasses. Dunes still occupy the central portion of the island, particularly here in the state park where the dunes have been spared development. On the windward side the dunes turn to beaches which look out on the Gulf of Mexico. St. George acts as a barrier island for Apalachicola Bay, but most of the time there’s little to protect against. The Gulf is typically about as calm of waters as you could hope for. Of course when the storms come, they really come. Hurricanes have been rearranging St George ever since it was created, even splitting it into two islands and then bringing it back together again. The fishermen ended up liking that extra entrance to the bay. What was originally the doing of a hurricane is now a properly dredged channel, though it’s certainly within a storm’s power to change that again.</p> -<p><img alt="Great Blue Heron, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/great-blue-heron-stgeorgeisland.jpg"/></p> -<p>I spent some time exploring the dunes along the east end, watching the herons standing tall and silent while Laughing Gulls cried in the air overhead. A pair of ospreys made lazy circles above the cluster of fishermen and pelicans occasionally dive bombed into the sea to pluck out an unlucky fish. After a while it got hot in the wind-sheltered, sun-baked sand dunes so I walked back to the shore for a swim before making the questionable decision to ride back along the beach. Florida sand is sugary fine stuff, not particularly supportive when you put a fair amount of weight on it. There were stretches where I could ride, but I ended up walking a good few miles as well, stopping for a swim whenever I got tired. </p> -<p>Back at the state park entrance I briefly detoured across the island to the leeward shore. The back side of the island is a totally different beast. Here the dunes give way to actual soil which supports a band of pine and palmetto forest that eventually opens up to wide, reed-filled tidal marshes. The marshlands are interspersed with what is locally known as hammocks — slightly raised bits of porous humus capable of sustaining of Live Oaks, Cedars and the occasional Cypress tree, small deciduous islands is a sea of reeds. The marshes overlook the <a href="/2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/">oyster fields of the Apalachicola Bay</a> and, on a clear day, the mainland of Florida two or three miles away. Apalachicola Bay is so shallow it’s tempting to think you could walk back to the mainland, though I’ve no idea why you would want to do that. </p> -<p>There’s not much to St. George, but it’s all I need. Were it not for the need to earn the bio-survival tickets necessary for obtaining food and shelter in this country I would rarely leave this place. A house with a view of the water, perhaps a boat for fishing and getting around the bay, and, to my mind anyway, you’d be well set for life. In the mean time, I’ll take what I can get of St. George.</p> - </div> - <div class="entry-footer"> - <aside id="wildlife"> - <h3>Fauna and Flora</h3> - - <ul> - - <li class="grouper">Birds<ul> - - <li>Brown Pelican </li> - - <li>Double-crested Cormorant </li> - - <li><a href="/dialogues/laughing-gull">Laughing Gull</a> </li> - - <li>Least Tern </li> - - <li>Mourning Dove </li> - - <li><a href="/dialogues/northern-mockingbird">Northern Mockingbird</a> </li> - - <li>Prothonotary Warbler </li> - - <li>Royal Tern </li> - - <li>Ruddy Turnstone </li> - - <li>Sanderling </li> - - <li>Willet </li> - </ul> - </ul> - </aside> - - - </div> - </article> - - - <div class="nav-wrapper"> - <nav id="page-navigation" > - <ul> - <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster" rel="prev" title=" Consider the Apalachicola Oyster">Consider the Apalachicola Oyster</a> - </li> - <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2013/05/oysterman-wanted" rel="next" title=" Oysterman Wanted">Oysterman Wanted</a> - </li> - </ul> - </nav> - </div> - - - - - - -<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> - -<div class="comment--form--header"> - <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> - <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> -</div> -<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> - -<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> - - - <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="133" id="id_object_pk"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833449" id="id_timestamp"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="d05c99e7cae0d149de57c156a1b13013e3490ab1" id="id_security_hash"> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_name">Name:</label> - <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> - <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_url">URL:</label> - <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> - <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> -</textarea></div> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset style="display:none;"> - <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> - <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> - </fieldset> - - - <div class="submit"> - <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> - <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> - </div> -</form> -<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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By Scott Gilbertson" />
-
-I was lucky; I grew up by the ocean. Surprisingly, or at least surprising to me, I never reached that point where I took it for granted. When something is right there for so long sometimes it blends into the background noise and you stop noticing it. Familiarity breeds contempt. Or at least complacency. But I've never felt complacent about my proximity to the sea. It's the one thing I miss living in Athens. How could you not? It's too big a thing to take for granted; it's were we came from. And it remains the one of the last true boundaries between the known and the unknown.
-
-Boundary lands are always the most interesting places -- the seashore, the edge of timberline, where the city starts to give way to the country. These are the fringes of our world, the peripheral edges of our collective vision where everything is less certain, but more possible, more inviting. Boundaries are the gray areas where life feels most real, most truly momentary because the boundaries themselves are ever in flux.
-
-The seashore is also just plain fun. Lounging in a hammock strung between two palm trees, sipping cocktails and enjoying the sunshine seems to be high on most people's list of things they think they would do if they won the lottery.
-
-I've spent a good bit of my time traveling either at or around the seashore, from [Thailand][1] to [India][2], to [Nicaragua][3] and [Indonesia][4]. The ocean may well be the only constant there is when you're traveling. I've been to plenty of places simply to see what the beaches were like -- [Goa, India][8]; [Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia][9]; [Little Corn Island, Nicaragua][10] and plenty more I haven't written about.
-
-These days though I'm less inclined to travel somewhere solely for the promise of nice beaches because I found St. George Island.
-
-<img class="postpic" src="[[base_url]]/2013/stgeorgeislandbeach02.jpg" alt="Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" />I stumbled upon St. George Island a couple years ago. St. George is just off the Gulf Coast of northwest Florida, only about 7 hours from where I live (9 with babies). There are better places if you're looking to dive or snorkel. Ditto if it's nightlife you're after. But if you're looking for a seemingly endless amount of gorgeous white sand beaches you'll share with only a few migratory birds, St. George is among the best boundary land in the world.
-
-I first arrived here largely by accident. My wife and I tagged along on an invitation to share a cheap beach house someone else had rented. We came back a year later. And again six months after that. And we hope to be back for a fourth visit before the year is over.
-
-St. George is more than just a nice beach though, it's a little backwater in time. It's a little slice of the world as it used to be, the world I grew up in, before the proliferation of mega-resorts and all-inclusive vacation package extravaganzas. St. George doesn't offer anything like that. There's little more to St. George than a store, a gas station and a couple of seafood trailers offering up fresh shrimp, snapper and scallops from nearby Apalachicola. There are some condos, but the two motels are rundown affairs that look like backwater holdouts from the early 1980s. There's nothing about this place that even hints at the world of resorts and all-inclusive packages. And that's the way I like it.
-
-It's entirely possible that by the time the mid-summer tourism peak rolls around at Independence Day St. George Island is unbearably crowded with north Florida rednecks, but, having only been here in the shoulder months of May, September and October, I have trouble picturing it. For the most part there's rarely been another person on the beach, let alone a crowd, when we're here. The surprising thing though is that by all rights it *should* be crowded, even in the off season, but it's not.
-
-St. George is long and narrow, some thirty miles from one end to the other, but rarely more than a half mile across. It's part of a barrier island chain, along with Dog Island and St Vincent Island, that provide shelter from the Gulf seas and help create the Apalachicola Bay.
-
-<img class="picfull" src="[[base_url]]/2013/stgeorgeislandbeach03.jpg" alt="Beach, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" />
-
-Roughly a third of the island, the entire western end, is closed off to a private, gated community. To karmically balance that the entire eastern half of the island is protected from development by the [Dr. Julian Bruce St. George Island State Park][5]. If we weren't fortunate enough to know someone willing to rent us a beach house on the cheap, we'd be [camping here][7]. Even if you're not camping the park is worth a visit. Hardly anyone seems to stray much beyond the beach parking lots so if you walk for a bit you'll easily find miles of beach you'll only have to share with a few plovers, sandpipers and the occasional Great Blue Heron standing atop the dunes behind you.
-
-One day I rented a crappy bike and rode out through the state park to the very eastern tip of the island where a small channel of water separates St. George from the uninhabited Dog Island. Aside from a few fishermen clustered around the leeward side of the channel, there was no one around.
-
-St. George was once little more than rolling sand dunes covered in sea oats and tall grasses. Dunes still occupy the central portion of the island, particularly here in the state park where the dunes have been spared development. On the windward side the dunes turn to beaches which look out on the Gulf of Mexico. St. George acts as a barrier island for Apalachicola Bay, but most of the time there's little to protect against. The Gulf is typically about as calm of waters as you could hope for. Of course when the storms come, they really come. Hurricanes have been rearranging St George ever since it was created, even splitting it into two islands and then bringing it back together again. The fishermen ended up liking that extra entrance to the bay. What was originally the doing of a hurricane is now a properly dredged channel, though it's certainly within a storm's power to change that again.
-
-<img class="picfull" src="[[base_url]]/2013/great-blue-heron-stgeorgeisland.jpg" alt="Great Blue Heron, St George Island, Florida. By Scott Gilbertson" />
-
-I spent some time exploring the dunes along the east end, watching the herons standing tall and silent while Laughing Gulls cried in the air overhead. A pair of ospreys made lazy circles above the cluster of fishermen and pelicans occasionally dive bombed into the sea to pluck out an unlucky fish. After a while it got hot in the wind-sheltered, sun-baked sand dunes so I walked back to the shore for a swim before making the questionable decision to ride back along the beach. Florida sand is sugary fine stuff, not particularly supportive when you put a fair amount of weight on it. There were stretches where I could ride, but I ended up walking a good few miles as well, stopping for a swim whenever I got tired.
-
-Back at the state park entrance I briefly detoured across the island to the leeward shore. The back side of the island is a totally different beast. Here the dunes give way to actual soil which supports a band of pine and palmetto forest that eventually opens up to wide, reed-filled tidal marshes. The marshlands are interspersed with what is locally known as hammocks -- slightly raised bits of porous humus capable of sustaining of Live Oaks, Cedars and the occasional Cypress tree, small deciduous islands is a sea of reeds. The marshes overlook the [oyster fields of the Apalachicola Bay][6] and, on a clear day, the mainland of Florida two or three miles away. Apalachicola Bay is so shallow it's tempting to think you could walk back to the mainland, though I've no idea why you would want to do that.
-
-There's not much to St. George, but it's all I need. Were it not for the need to earn the bio-survival tickets necessary for obtaining food and shelter in this country I would rarely leave this place. A house with a view of the water, perhaps a boat for fishing and getting around the bay, and, to my mind anyway, you'd be well set for life. In the mean time, I'll take what I can get of St. George.
-
-
-
-[1]: /writing/thailand/
-[2]: /writing/india/
-[3]: /writing/nicaragua/
-[4]: /writing/indonesia/
-[5]: http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/
-[6]: /2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/
-[7]: http://www.floridastateparks.org/stgeorgeisland/activities.cfm#12
-[8]: /2005/nov/20/fish-story/
-[9]: /2011/jun/23/best-snorkeling-world/
-[10]: /2008/apr/05/little-island-sun/
- diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.amp deleted file mode 100644 index ed3ccd6..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,191 +0,0 @@ - - -<!doctype html> -<html amp lang="en"> -<head> -<meta charset="utf-8"> -<title>Consider the Apalachicola Oyster</title> -<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster"> - <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> - <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> - <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster"> - <meta name="twitter:description" content="If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters."/> - <meta name="twitter:title" content="Consider the Apalachicola Oyster"/> - <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> - <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> - <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2013/considertheoyster.jpg"/> - <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> - <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> - <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> - <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> - - <meta name="geo.placename" content="Apalachicola, Florida"> - <meta name="geo.region" content="US-fl"> - <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> - <meta property="og:title" content="Consider the Apalachicola Oyster" /> - <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster" /> - <meta property="og:description" content="If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters." /> - <meta property="article:published_time" content="2013-05-22T19:43:23" /> - <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> - <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> - <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2013/considertheoyster.jpg" /> - <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/oyster1.jpg" /> - <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/viewofmarsh.jpg" /> - <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/famous_apalachicola_bay_oysters.jpg" /> - <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/pemaquidmainedocks.jpg" /> - <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> - - -<script type="application/ld+json"> -{ - "@context": "http://schema.org", - "@type": "BlogPosting", - "headline": "Consider the Apalachicola Oyster", - "description": "If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters.", - "datePublished": "2013-05-22T19:43:23", - "author": { - "@type": "Person", - "name": "Scott Gilbertson" - }, - "publisher": { - "@type": "Person", - "name": "Scott Gilbertson" - "logo": { - "@type": "ImageObject", - "url": "", - "width": 240, - "height": 53 - } - } -} -</script> -<style amp-custom> -body { - font-size: 1rem; 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- font-size: 0.875rem; -} -blockquote * { - font-style: italic; -} -blockquote * em { - font-weight: bold; -} -blockquote * strong { - font-style: normal; -} -hr { - border: none; - border-bottom: 0.0625rem dotted #ccc; -} -.hide {display: none;} -</style> -<style>body {opacity: 0}</style><noscript><style>body {opacity: 1}</style></noscript> -<script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> -</head> -<body> - -<nav> -<a href="https://luxagraf.net/"> -luxagraf</a> -</nav> - -<main class="h-entry"> - <article class="h-entry hentry post--article" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/Article"> - <header id="header" class="post--header "> - <h1 class="p-name entry-title post--title" itemprop="headline">Consider the Apalachicola Oyster</h1> - <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2013-05-22T19:43:23" itemprop="datePublished">May <span>22, 2013</span></time> - <p class="p-author author hide" itemprop="author"><span class="byline-author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></span></p> - <aside class="p-location h-adr adr post--location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> - <span class="p-locality locality">Apalachicola</span>, <a class="p-region region" href="/jrnl/united-states/" title="travel writing from the United States">Florida</a>, <span class="p-country-name">U.S.</span> - </aside> - </header> - <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> - <p><amp-img alt="Apalachicola Oyster, raw, on the half shell." height="513" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/oyster1.jpg" width="960"></amp-img></p> -<p>Just below the rough, wooden bar currently holding up my beer are four boat slips, one of which holds a 28-foot boat I could actually afford to buy. Technically. Provided I didn't also need food and shelter for my family. Beyond the boat is the junction of river and bay, where the bay narrows back into a river channel which, based on my hour or so of observing, is used mainly by shrimping vessels headed somewhere further upstream. Downstream the reeds thicken and marsh proper begins and beyond that the water broadens out to form Apalachicola Bay with its endless shallows and oysterbeds.</p> -<p>The slightly dilapidated boat down on the docks below looks like a better and better deal with every passing beer. So far though the half dozen raw Apalachicola oysters I've downed have provided enough sustenance to prevent me from emptying my savings. I am not yet the new owner, but should the oyster fields run dry, who knows?</p> -<p>If there is a simultaneously gluttonous and yet clean, light food to match the oyster I have not found it. One part light sweetness, one part salty smoothness, oysters are a just about perfect food for those who've acquired the taste. Not cooked, though cooked, especially an oyster roast done over an open fire with some sheet metal and damp burlap, can be an amazing thing. But no, not cooked. Embrace gluttony and slurp them down raw. In front of me are half a dozen empty shells, calcified evidence of a flagrantly gluttonous afternoon. </p> -<p>Out across the water, just beyond where the reeds of the estuary give way to the shallow, oyster-laden expanses of the Apalachicola Bay, a blue-hulled, single-masted boat is anchored, two people lounge in the cockpit, shirtless, lazing in the sun, reminding me that I too ought to have a boat. Not a big boat. Certainly not a ship. Just something for coastal cruising that can still stand up to the occasional ocean crossing. A boat. My gaze drifts down to the docks in front of me, the for sale sign still threaded through the mainmast rigging of what really is a not all that bad looking boat... But first, more oysters.</p> -<p><amp-img alt="Shrimp boat headed upstream; Apalachicola River and Marsh." height="279" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/viewofmarsh.jpg" width="550"></amp-img></p> -<p>If you know the name Apalachicola at all it's likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering "oysters" is akin to walking in a bar and ordering "a beer." But unlike beer, oysters don't have brands, they have places -- Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola. </p> -<p><amp-img alt="One gallon can of Apalachicola Oysters." height="380" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/famous_apalachicola_bay_oysters.jpg" width="300"></amp-img>Ask a marine biologist and they will point out that there are really only a handful of oyster species in the world and many of them, like those that produce pearls, aren't part of our culinary repertoire. In fact, in the U.S. there are really only three species of oysters consumed -- Pacific (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea gigas</i>), Kumamoto (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea sikamea</i>) and Eastern, sometimes called Atlantic or Gulf oysters (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea virginica</i>). It's the difference in place and environment -- water temperature, sea floor conditions, available nutrients and so on -- not species that produce the different sizes and shapes of oysters you see. That's why, with a handful of exceptions, almost every variety of oyster you've ever seen in a restaurant is named after its point of origin and is not actually a separate species or even subspecies.</p> -<p>An oyster's point of origin is not just the determining factor in how it tastes, it's also the best place to eat one. Oysters are sometimes treated as a fine dining item, but I've always thought of them more of the street food of wharves and marinas, or, as in Paris, actual street food. Oysters are simple -- there's not even any cooking involved -- eating them should be simple too.</p> -<p>My favorite way to eat oysters is at an open air raw bar, preferably on the docks somewhere and preferably within view of the oyster boats and the waters they ply. Oysters are best served on a tray with some crackers on the side, which are best politely handed back to your server or, if you're doing it right, tossed in the water for the fish to consume. If you must put something on them, try a little of the local hot sauce (in Apalachicola that would be <a href="http://edsred.com/">Ed's Red</a>).</p> -<p><amp-img alt="Docks in Pemaquid, Maine, waiting on an oyster boat." height="316" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/pemaquidmainedocks.jpg" width="550"></amp-img></p> -<p>My best oyster experience was in Pemaquid, Maine where I actually got to watch an oysterman tie up the boat, exchange a few hand gestures with the bartender and bring up two buckets of fresh oysters pulled straight out of the hold all while I sat sipping a beer, waiting on another dozen. In Wellfleet there were no boats in, but there was still plenty of salt air, rough pine tables and a good view of the oyster flats just beyond the harbor. In Paris I just stood there and slurped before walking on again.</p> -<p>If Apalachicola has such a setup it's hidden well enough that I never found it. </p> -<p>Instead we settled for a raw bar/restaurant which I would never have entered under normal circumstances. The sort of purposefully tacky place designed to entice tourists with deliberate misspellings and references to parrotheads painted on the stairs. It was almost enough to send me retreating back to the car, but the sign promised views of the marsh, and, frankly, I'd already driven the wharf area once and this place was, as best I could tell, our only hope. As it turned out the covered upstairs deck had a lovely view of the marshes and the staff was friendly enough. </p> -<p>Half a dozen oysters later I'd changed my tune a bit on Apalachicola oysters. Apalachicola oysters have something of a lowly status among your oyster connoisseurs. Here the waters are warmer and the oysters therefore larger and somewhat more risky to eat than colder water varieties. Of course bigger is relative. In his book <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Oyster:_History_on_the_Half_Shell">The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell</a></cite>, Mark Kurlansky describes how the once mighty oyster trade of New York used to bring in oysters the size of dinner plates. Quite frankly, though I love oysters, that sounds repulsive.</p> -<p>Oysters are good things, but dinner plate sized oysters would most definitely be too much of a good thing. And while I enjoyed my Apalachicola oysters I do still think there are better oysters out there -- Beausoleils remain my personal favorite (and are one of the few varieties I know of not named after their place of origin -- New Brunswick). That said, I regret waiting until my third trip to the area to sample the local bivalves. Only a fool would pass on the chance to eat an oyster plucked from waters you can watch while eating it and thankfully, I am no longer that fool.</p> -<p>Sadly I am also not yet the owner of a boat. Not the one down on the docks in front of me nor any other. But one day I will be. I don't know where I'll go exactly, don't know what I'll do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some harbors, most likely some marinas, some wharves where the oyster boats might also tie up in the evenings and where I might find a cold beer or two and some lovely, gluttonous, yet so light and clean, little oysters to make sure the beer doesn't send everything cockeyed, to make sure the world stays nicely on keel even without a boat.</p> - </div> - </article> -</main> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.html deleted file mode 100644 index b927b8d..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,344 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html -class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> - -<head> - <title>Consider The Apalachicola Oyster - by Scott Gilbertson</title> - <meta charset="utf-8"> - <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> - <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> - <meta name="description" - content="If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters."> - <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> - <link rel="alternate" - type="application/rss+xml" - title="Luxagraf RSS feed" - href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> - <link rel="stylesheet" - href="/media/screenv9.css" - media="screen"> - <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> - <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> - <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> - <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> - - <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster" /> - <meta name="ICBM" content="29.728672056480878, -84.9837897312466" /> - <meta name="geo.position" content="29.728672056480878; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> - </div> - <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2013-05-22T19:43:23" itemprop="datePublished">May <span>22, 2013</span></time> - <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> - </div> - </header> - <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> - <p><img alt="Apalachicola Oyster, raw, on the half shell." class="picwide" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/oyster1.jpg"/></p> -<p>Just below the rough, wooden bar currently holding up my beer are four boat slips, one of which holds a 28-foot boat I could actually afford to buy. Technically. Provided I didn’t also need food and shelter for my family. Beyond the boat is the junction of river and bay, where the bay narrows back into a river channel which, based on my hour or so of observing, is used mainly by shrimping vessels headed somewhere further upstream. Downstream the reeds thicken and marsh proper begins and beyond that the water broadens out to form Apalachicola Bay with its endless shallows and oysterbeds.</p> -<p>The slightly dilapidated boat down on the docks below looks like a better and better deal with every passing beer. So far though the half dozen raw Apalachicola oysters I’ve downed have provided enough sustenance to prevent me from emptying my savings. I am not yet the new owner, but should the oyster fields run dry, who knows?</p> -<p>If there is a simultaneously gluttonous and yet clean, light food to match the oyster I have not found it. One part light sweetness, one part salty smoothness, oysters are a just about perfect food for those who’ve acquired the taste. Not cooked, though cooked, especially an oyster roast done over an open fire with some sheet metal and damp burlap, can be an amazing thing. But no, not cooked. Embrace gluttony and slurp them down raw. In front of me are half a dozen empty shells, calcified evidence of a flagrantly gluttonous afternoon. </p> -<p>Out across the water, just beyond where the reeds of the estuary give way to the shallow, oyster-laden expanses of the Apalachicola Bay, a blue-hulled, single-masted boat is anchored, two people lounge in the cockpit, shirtless, lazing in the sun, reminding me that I too ought to have a boat. Not a big boat. Certainly not a ship. Just something for coastal cruising that can still stand up to the occasional ocean crossing. A boat. My gaze drifts down to the docks in front of me, the for sale sign still threaded through the mainmast rigging of what really is a not all that bad looking boat… But first, more oysters.</p> -<p><img alt="Shrimp boat headed upstream; Apalachicola River and Marsh." class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/viewofmarsh.jpg"/></p> -<p>If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering “oysters” is akin to walking in a bar and ordering “a beer.” But unlike beer, oysters don’t have brands, they have places — Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola. </p> -<p><img alt="One gallon can of Apalachicola Oysters." class="postpic" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/famous_apalachicola_bay_oysters.jpg"/>Ask a marine biologist and they will point out that there are really only a handful of oyster species in the world and many of them, like those that produce pearls, aren’t part of our culinary repertoire. In fact, in the U.S. there are really only three species of oysters consumed — Pacific (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea gigas</i>), Kumamoto (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea sikamea</i>) and Eastern, sometimes called Atlantic or Gulf oysters (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea virginica</i>). It’s the difference in place and environment — water temperature, sea floor conditions, available nutrients and so on — not species that produce the different sizes and shapes of oysters you see. That’s why, with a handful of exceptions, almost every variety of oyster you’ve ever seen in a restaurant is named after its point of origin and is not actually a separate species or even subspecies.</p> -<p>An oyster’s point of origin is not just the determining factor in how it tastes, it’s also the best place to eat one. Oysters are sometimes treated as a fine dining item, but I’ve always thought of them more of the street food of wharves and marinas, or, as in Paris, actual street food. Oysters are simple — there’s not even any cooking involved — eating them should be simple too.</p> -<p>My favorite way to eat oysters is at an open air raw bar, preferably on the docks somewhere and preferably within view of the oyster boats and the waters they ply. Oysters are best served on a tray with some crackers on the side, which are best politely handed back to your server or, if you’re doing it right, tossed in the water for the fish to consume. If you must put something on them, try a little of the local hot sauce (in Apalachicola that would be <a href="http://edsred.com/">Ed’s Red</a>).</p> -<p><img alt="Docks in Pemaquid, Maine, waiting on an oyster boat." class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2013/pemaquidmainedocks.jpg"/></p> -<p>My best oyster experience was in Pemaquid, Maine where I actually got to watch an oysterman tie up the boat, exchange a few hand gestures with the bartender and bring up two buckets of fresh oysters pulled straight out of the hold all while I sat sipping a beer, waiting on another dozen. In Wellfleet there were no boats in, but there was still plenty of salt air, rough pine tables and a good view of the oyster flats just beyond the harbor. In Paris I just stood there and slurped before walking on again.</p> -<p>If Apalachicola has such a setup it’s hidden well enough that I never found it. </p> -<p>Instead we settled for a raw bar/restaurant which I would never have entered under normal circumstances. The sort of purposefully tacky place designed to entice tourists with deliberate misspellings and references to parrotheads painted on the stairs. It was almost enough to send me retreating back to the car, but the sign promised views of the marsh, and, frankly, I’d already driven the wharf area once and this place was, as best I could tell, our only hope. As it turned out the covered upstairs deck had a lovely view of the marshes and the staff was friendly enough. </p> -<p>Half a dozen oysters later I’d changed my tune a bit on Apalachicola oysters. Apalachicola oysters have something of a lowly status among your oyster connoisseurs. Here the waters are warmer and the oysters therefore larger and somewhat more risky to eat than colder water varieties. Of course bigger is relative. In his book <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Oyster:_History_on_the_Half_Shell">The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell</a></cite>, Mark Kurlansky describes how the once mighty oyster trade of New York used to bring in oysters the size of dinner plates. Quite frankly, though I love oysters, that sounds repulsive.</p> -<p>Oysters are good things, but dinner plate sized oysters would most definitely be too much of a good thing. And while I enjoyed my Apalachicola oysters I do still think there are better oysters out there — Beausoleils remain my personal favorite (and are one of the few varieties I know of not named after their place of origin — New Brunswick). That said, I regret waiting until my third trip to the area to sample the local bivalves. Only a fool would pass on the chance to eat an oyster plucked from waters you can watch while eating it and thankfully, I am no longer that fool.</p> -<p>Sadly I am also not yet the owner of a boat. Not the one down on the docks in front of me nor any other. But one day I will be. I don’t know where I’ll go exactly, don’t know what I’ll do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some harbors, most likely some marinas, some wharves where the oyster boats might also tie up in the evenings and where I might find a cold beer or two and some lovely, gluttonous, yet so light and clean, little oysters to make sure the beer doesn’t send everything cockeyed, to make sure the world stays nicely on keel even without a boat.</p> - </div> - - </article> - - - <div class="nav-wrapper"> - <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> - <ul> - <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2012/05/things-behind-sun" rel="prev" title=" Things Behind the Sun">Things Behind the Sun</a> - </li> - <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches" rel="next" title=" All the Pretty Beaches">All the Pretty Beaches</a> - </li> - </ul> - </nav> - </div> - - - - - - -<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> - -<div class="comment--form--header"> - <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> - <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> -</div> -<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> - -<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> - - - <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="132" id="id_object_pk"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833450" id="id_timestamp"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="f2a5dd3fdfd21ebe443cf1f293d24f744527924c" id="id_security_hash"> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_name">Name:</label> - <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> - <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_url">URL:</label> - <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> - <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> -</textarea></div> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset style="display:none;"> - <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> - <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> - </fieldset> - - - <div class="submit"> - <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> - <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> - </div> -</form> -<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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-
-Just below the rough, wooden bar currently holding up my beer are four boat slips, one of which holds a 28-foot boat I could actually afford to buy. Technically. Provided I didn't also need food and shelter for my family. Beyond the boat is the junction of river and bay, where the bay narrows back into a river channel which, based on my hour or so of observing, is used mainly by shrimping vessels headed somewhere further upstream. Downstream the reeds thicken and marsh proper begins and beyond that the water broadens out to form Apalachicola Bay with its endless shallows and oysterbeds.
-
-The slightly dilapidated boat down on the docks below looks like a better and better deal with every passing beer. So far though the half dozen raw Apalachicola oysters I've downed have provided enough sustenance to prevent me from emptying my savings. I am not yet the new owner, but should the oyster fields run dry, who knows?
-
-If there is a simultaneously gluttonous and yet clean, light food to match the oyster I have not found it. One part light sweetness, one part salty smoothness, oysters are a just about perfect food for those who've acquired the taste. Not cooked, though cooked, especially an oyster roast done over an open fire with some sheet metal and damp burlap, can be an amazing thing. But no, not cooked. Embrace gluttony and slurp them down raw. In front of me are half a dozen empty shells, calcified evidence of a flagrantly gluttonous afternoon.
-
-Out across the water, just beyond where the reeds of the estuary give way to the shallow, oyster-laden expanses of the Apalachicola Bay, a blue-hulled, single-masted boat is anchored, two people lounge in the cockpit, shirtless, lazing in the sun, reminding me that I too ought to have a boat. Not a big boat. Certainly not a ship. Just something for coastal cruising that can still stand up to the occasional ocean crossing. A boat. My gaze drifts down to the docks in front of me, the for sale sign still threaded through the mainmast rigging of what really is a not all that bad looking boat... But first, more oysters.
-
-<img class="picfull" src="[[base_url]]/2013/viewofmarsh.jpg" alt="Shrimp boat headed upstream; Apalachicola River and Marsh." />
-
-If you know the name Apalachicola at all it's likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering "oysters" is akin to walking in a bar and ordering "a beer." But unlike beer, oysters don't have brands, they have places -- Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola.
-
-<img class="postpic" src="[[base_url]]/2013/famous_apalachicola_bay_oysters.jpg" alt="One gallon can of Apalachicola Oysters." />Ask a marine biologist and they will point out that there are really only a handful of oyster species in the world and many of them, like those that produce pearls, aren't part of our culinary repertoire. In fact, in the U.S. there are really only three species of oysters consumed -- Pacific (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea gigas</i>), Kumamoto (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea sikamea</i>) and Eastern, sometimes called Atlantic or Gulf oysters (<i class="scientific">Crassostrea virginica</i>). It's the difference in place and environment -- water temperature, sea floor conditions, available nutrients and so on -- not species that produce the different sizes and shapes of oysters you see. That's why, with a handful of exceptions, almost every variety of oyster you've ever seen in a restaurant is named after its point of origin and is not actually a separate species or even subspecies.
-
-An oyster's point of origin is not just the determining factor in how it tastes, it's also the best place to eat one. Oysters are sometimes treated as a fine dining item, but I've always thought of them more of the street food of wharves and marinas, or, as in Paris, actual street food. Oysters are simple -- there's not even any cooking involved -- eating them should be simple too.
-
-My favorite way to eat oysters is at an open air raw bar, preferably on the docks somewhere and preferably within view of the oyster boats and the waters they ply. Oysters are best served on a tray with some crackers on the side, which are best politely handed back to your server or, if you're doing it right, tossed in the water for the fish to consume. If you must put something on them, try a little of the local hot sauce (in Apalachicola that would be <a href="http://edsred.com/">Ed's Red</a>).
-
-<img class="picfull" src="[[base_url]]/2013/pemaquidmainedocks.jpg" alt="Docks in Pemaquid, Maine, waiting on an oyster boat." />
-
-My best oyster experience was in Pemaquid, Maine where I actually got to watch an oysterman tie up the boat, exchange a few hand gestures with the bartender and bring up two buckets of fresh oysters pulled straight out of the hold all while I sat sipping a beer, waiting on another dozen. In Wellfleet there were no boats in, but there was still plenty of salt air, rough pine tables and a good view of the oyster flats just beyond the harbor. In Paris I just stood there and slurped before walking on again.
-
-If Apalachicola has such a setup it's hidden well enough that I never found it.
-
-Instead we settled for a raw bar/restaurant which I would never have entered under normal circumstances. The sort of purposefully tacky place designed to entice tourists with deliberate misspellings and references to parrotheads painted on the stairs. It was almost enough to send me retreating back to the car, but the sign promised views of the marsh, and, frankly, I'd already driven the wharf area once and this place was, as best I could tell, our only hope. As it turned out the covered upstairs deck had a lovely view of the marshes and the staff was friendly enough.
-
-Half a dozen oysters later I'd changed my tune a bit on Apalachicola oysters. Apalachicola oysters have something of a lowly status among your oyster connoisseurs. Here the waters are warmer and the oysters therefore larger and somewhat more risky to eat than colder water varieties. Of course bigger is relative. In his book <cite>[The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell][1]</cite>, Mark Kurlansky describes how the once mighty oyster trade of New York used to bring in oysters the size of dinner plates. Quite frankly, though I love oysters, that sounds repulsive.
-
-Oysters are good things, but dinner plate sized oysters would most definitely be too much of a good thing. And while I enjoyed my Apalachicola oysters I do still think there are better oysters out there -- Beausoleils remain my personal favorite (and are one of the few varieties I know of not named after their place of origin -- New Brunswick). That said, I regret waiting until my third trip to the area to sample the local bivalves. Only a fool would pass on the chance to eat an oyster plucked from waters you can watch while eating it and thankfully, I am no longer that fool.
-
-Sadly I am also not yet the owner of a boat. Not the one down on the docks in front of me nor any other. But one day I will be. I don't know where I'll go exactly, don't know what I'll do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some harbors, most likely some marinas, some wharves where the oyster boats might also tie up in the evenings and where I might find a cold beer or two and some lovely, gluttonous, yet so light and clean, little oysters to make sure the beer doesn't send everything cockeyed, to make sure the world stays nicely on keel even without a boat.
-
-[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Oyster:_History_on_the_Half_Shell
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Some part of their heads is deep red color, near the eye and the rest of them is black and white. I have ideas, but I don't know for sure. </p> -<p>My wife is searching Google images on her phone, but Google thinks that "tern" is a misspelling of "turn", which causes both of us to briefly contemplate how fast the world of <cite>Idiocracy</cite> is approaching. And still no positive identification of the three sleek black and white birds with splashes of vermilion across their faces, skimming the shoreline in tight formation, beaks open, <em>skimming the water from time to time</em>.</p> -<p>I have a bird book. It's at home on the sideboard. It's been too long since I did this sort of thing, birdwatching. It didn't occur to me that I might want the book. The binoculars are automatic, they nearly alway make the trip even if they spend the majority of it tucked at the bottom or a bag or rattling around in an ammo can. </p> -<p>I grew up birding. My father was a biologist. Birding was just one of many things we did on family hikes. There were plant pressings, lizards caught and sometimes kept. Snakes, snails, frogs, insects too. But I always liked watching the birds.</p> -<p>There's something wonderfully ephemeral about watching birds. They're there, but then at any given moment they can flutter tiny wings and disappear into a thicket of trees, or swoop huge spans of wing that slowly and majestically lift their bodies up into the air until they become just a thin black line on the distant horizon.</p> -<p>I may not have actually pursued identifications and list making much in my adult years, but I've never tired of watching birds just be birds. </p> -<p>I started traveling on my feet. Hiking the Sierra Nevada, the Trinity Alps, the White Mountains, the deserts of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I spent a lot of time out there on trails, resting on rocks, wondering, what is this thin wisp of plant clinging to life on the edge of a sandstone cliff? What is this hummingbird buzzing me like an angry hornet? Spend enough time outdoors and I think some level of naturalism finds you.</p> -<p>That I remain, after all these years, drawn to birds could be old habits not dying, but it could also be the simple fact that birds are everywhere. Even in the densest examples of human population where the crush of people is often quite literal, like Ciudad de México or the entrance to a subway in New York at rush hour, there are still birds there. Sparrows, pigeons, starlings. Survivors.</p> -<p>Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently.</p> -<p>I've never really written about it here because it was something that seemed too idiosyncratic to share. Even I think it perhaps a bit odd to spend time watching birds. Or maybe not.</p> -<p>The birds might lead you to look at the world differently, to be part of the world in ways that you are not the rest of the time. It requires that you be both in your self, mindful and aware of your surroundings (lest you trip and fall or worse), but also to be out of yourself, to be aware of the other and its movements, its awareness. It's a reminder that you are not just in the world, but an active part of it.</p> -<p>Watching birds becomes a gateway to much more. You can't spend much time watching birds without starting to think about insects and sticks, bushes, trees, water, habitats, ecology, geography, weather, architecture. Everything on earth is intrinsically linked. Most of it much more closely linked than we generally realize. </p> -<p>Now that I have two young children I've decided to get back into the world of birding, identification, lists and all. In part because it's a good way to get out in nature, and there's nothing that teaches so readily or excites children so much as nature. Also in part because it was part of my own childhood, but also because I want to be able to teach the art of bird watching to my children. They're less than a year old right now, far too young to use binoculars or even pay attention to anything for more than a minute or two, but they already enjoy watching the robins and blue jays that prance on our deck at home. But I'm not trying to get them bird watching right now, I'm relearning the art myself. Relearning how to identify, how to observe birds and their world.</p> -<p>You can't teach your children something if you aren't already well versed in it yourself. Moreover you can't hope to instill any sense of enthusiasm if you don't have it yourself. Even babies have powerfully accurate bullshit detectors. </p> -<p>I don't necessarily care if my children get into birding or not. It's not the birds I'd like them to care about; it's the sense of curiosity about the world around them that I'd like to pass on. It's that sense of curiosity and wonder that makes bird watching worth doing and that curiosity carries will beyond the binocular lens. Bird watching is part of the lost art of paying attention to not just the world around you, but the details within that world, to stop, to watch, to make something else the center of your world for a few minutes and to consider its world, to see how it lives, what it does, what it wants, how it lives. To observe, to really watch. To record what you saw when it makes sense to do so and to just watch and enjoy when it doesn't. That's bird watching. At least that's what it means to me. </p> -<p>I was brought up in nature -- birding, hiking, camping, backpacking, fishing, climbing, kayaking. These were the things my family did for fun. I want to create similar experiences for my kids, to take them out into nature to watch and identify wildlife, to cook on camp stoves, to smell wood fires warming coffee in the morning, to cozy up in a sleeping bag, to watch the stars from inside a tent, to hit the trails at dawn and head for the high country of the mountains because the high country is where human beings are meant to go, to push yourself, your knowledge of the world, your understanding and feeling of being alive beyond where it is today. To never stop exploring, as my former employer emblazons on all its advertising. Disingenuous though it may be on a North Face tag, the words are nevertheless perhaps the best advice there is.</p> -<p>More than just teaching my kids about birds I want to teach them to have insatiable curiosity, to look at the world as ever-changing and always new, always with something enticing just around the next bend. I don't want them to say, "look daddy, a bird", but "daddy, what kind of bird is that, what is it doing, where is it going why is it doing that where does it sleep what does it eat?" and the thousands of other questions a curious child will think of -- questions I can't even imagine. </p> -<p>I'm not 100 percent sure yet what I think the role of a good parent is, but I lean toward this: that you point them in the right direction and get the hell out of the way. To answer the easy questions so that they have enough of a start, the confidence to start asking the really hard questions, the ones even I can't answer.</p> -<p>And I think one of the best ways to get them started on the curiosity road is to get them out exploring the natural world and exploring it in detail, watching birds, hiking trails, climbing mountains and watching the pines sway in the wind while you eat lunch, seen the starts through the screen of the tent and all the other things I did and wished I had done as a child.</p> -<p>But you can't teach your children these things if you don't do them yourself. If you don't have a curiosity about the world you won't be able to pass it along. You can't fake it. So I'm getting back into the natural world, into bird watching down here on the shores of the Gulf coast because I want to relearn everything I once knew, still do know, buried somewhere deep down, and pull it back up to the surface both so I can pass it on, but also so I can enjoy it again. I can remember a time when my whole world could momentarily be forgotten and everything about the world suddenly wrapped up in the skittish flitter of a warbler or a Sanderling darting the shoreline or a Black Skimmer, ahem, <em>skimming the shoreline</em>, its partly-red bill strikingly red against the blue of sea and sky, its mouth open as if trying to swallow the ocean whole. </p> -<p><small>[In addition to forgetting the bird book, I did not have my camera on me when we down at the shoreline. the image at the top of the post is by Ed Yourdon, who posted something that looked <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/16733423838">eerily similar</a> to our experience on Flickr with a CC license that allow me to use it here. Thanks Ed.]</small></p> - </div> - </article> -</main> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/king-birds.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/king-birds.html deleted file mode 100644 index 0760183..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/king-birds.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,390 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html -class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> - -<head> - <title>King Of Birds - by Scott Gilbertson</title> - <meta charset="utf-8"> - <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> - <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> - <meta name="description" - content="Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. 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The birds are hard to see, moving far too fast to see any details about them. Some part of their head is a deep red color, you catch flashes of it when they come out of the sun. The rest of them is starkly black and white. I have ideas, but I don’t know for sure. Shorebirds have never been my strong suit.</p> -<p>My wife is searching Google images on her phone, but Google thinks that “tern” is a misspelling of “turn”. Three more come by, sleek black and white birds with splashes of vermilion across their faces, skimming the shoreline in tight formation, beaks open, <em>skimming the water from time to time</em>.</p> -<p>I have a bird book. It’s at home on the sideboard. It’s been too long since I did this sort of thing, birdwatching. It didn’t occur to me that I might want the book. The binoculars are automatic, they nearly always make the trip even if they spend the majority of it tucked at the bottom of a bag or rattling around in an ammo can. </p> -<p>I grew up birding. My father was a biologist. Birding was just one of many things we did on family hikes. There were plant pressings, lizards caught and sometimes kept. Snakes, snails, frogs, insects too. But I always liked watching the birds.</p> -<p>There’s something wonderfully ephemeral about watching birds. They’re there, but then at any given moment they can flutter tiny wings and disappear into a thicket of trees, or swoop huge spans of wing that slowly and majestically lift their bodies up into the air until they become just a thin black line on the distant horizon.</p> -<p>I may not have actually pursued identifications and list making much in my adult years, but I’ve never tired of watching birds be birds. </p> -<p>I started traveling using my feet. Start where you are, with what you have right? I started hiking. I traveled to the Sierra Nevada, the Trinity Alps, the White Mountains, the deserts of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I spent a lot of time out there on trails, resting on rocks, wondering, what is this thin wisp of plant clinging to life on the edge of a sandstone cliff? What is this hummingbird buzzing me like an angry hornet? Spend enough time outdoors and you become a naturalist.</p> -<p>That I remain, after all these years, drawn to birds could be old habits not dying, but it could also be the simple fact that birds are everywhere. Even in the densest examples of human population where the crush of people is often literal, like <a href="/jrnl/2018/09/big-exit">Ciudad de México</a> or the entrance to a subway in New York at rush hour, there are still birds there. Sparrows, pigeons, starlings. Survivors.</p> -<p>Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You’re always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands, the places where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently.</p> -<p>Birds lead you to look at the world differently, to be part of the world in ways that you are not without them. Birdwatching requires that you be both in your self, mindful and aware of your surroundings (lest you trip and fall, or worse), but also to be out of yourself, to be aware of the other and its movements, its awareness. It’s a reminder that you are not just in the world, but an active part of it.</p> -<p>Watching birds becomes a gateway to much more. You can’t spend much time watching birds without starting to think about insects and sticks, bushes, trees, water, habitats, ecology, geography, weather, architecture. Everything on earth is intrinsically linked to everything else. </p> -<p>Now that I have two young children I’ve decided to get back into the world of birding, identification, lists and all. In part because it’s a good way to get out in nature. There’s nothing that teaches so readily or excites children so much as nature.</p> -<p>I want to be able to teach the art of birdwatching to my children. They’re less than a year old right now, far too young to use binoculars or even pay attention to anything for more than a minute or two, but they already enjoy watching the robins and blue jays that prance on our deck at home. </p> -<p>I’m not trying to get them bird watching right now though. I’m relearning the art myself. Relearning how to identify, how to observe birds and their world. You can’t teach your children something if you aren’t already well versed in it yourself. Moreover you can’t hope to instill any sense of enthusiasm if you don’t have it yourself. Even babies have powerfully accurate bullshit detectors. </p> -<p>I don’t necessarily care if my children get into birding or not. It’s not the birds I’d like them to care about; it’s the sense of curiosity about the world around them that I’d like to pass on. It’s that sense of curiosity and wonder that makes bird watching worth doing and that curiosity carries will beyond the binocular lens. Bird watching is part of the lost art of paying attention to not just the world around you, but the details within that world, to stop, to watch, to make something else the center of your world for a few minutes and to consider its world, to see how it lives, what it does, what it wants, how it lives. To observe, to really watch. To record what you saw when it makes sense to do so and to just watch and enjoy when it doesn’t. That’s bird watching. At least that’s what it means to me. </p> -<p>I was brought up in nature — birding, hiking, camping, backpacking, fishing, climbing, kayaking. These were the things my family did for fun. I want to create similar experiences for my kids, to take them out into nature to watch and identify wildlife, to cook on camp stoves, to smell wood fires warming coffee in the morning, to cozy up in a sleeping bag, to watch the stars from inside a tent, to hit the trails at dawn and head for the high country of the mountains because the high country is where human beings are meant to go, to push yourself, your knowledge of the world, your understanding and feeling of being alive beyond where it is today. </p> -<p>The world is ever-changing, always new. There’s always something enticing around the next bend. I don’t want them to say, “look daddy, a bird”, but “daddy, what kind of bird is that? What is it doing? Where is it going? Why is it doing that? Where does it sleep? What does it eat?” and the thousands of other questions a curious child will think of — questions I can’t even imagine. </p> -<p>I’m not 100 percent sure yet what I think the role of a good parent is, but I lean toward this: that you point them in the right direction and get the hell out of the way. Answer the easy questions so that they have a start, and the confidence to start asking the really hard questions, the ones I can’t answer.</p> -<p>The best ways to get them started on the curiosity road is to get them out exploring the natural world, exploring it in detail, watching birds, hiking trails, climbing mountains, watching the pines sway in the wind while you eat lunch, seeing the stars through the screen of the tent, and all the other things I did and wished I had done as a child.</p> -<p>But you can’t teach your children these things if you don’t do them yourself. If you don’t have a curiosity about the world you won’t be able to pass it along. You can’t fake it. </p> -<p>So I’m getting back into the natural world, into bird watching down here on the shores of the Gulf coast because I want to re-learn everything I once knew, still do know, buried somewhere deep down, and pull it back up to the surface so I can enjoy it again. Maybe I can even pass it on.</p> -<p>I can remember a time when my whole world could momentarily be forgotten and everything about the world suddenly wrapped up in the skittish flitter of a warbler or a Sanderling darting the shoreline or a Black Skimmer, ahem, <em>skimming the shoreline</em>, its partly-red bill strikingly red against the blue of sea and sky, its mouth open as if trying to swallow the ocean whole.</p> - </div> - <div class="entry-footer"> - <aside id="wildlife"> - <h3>Fauna and Flora</h3> - - <ul> - - <li class="grouper">Birds<ul> - - <li>Brown Pelican </li> - - <li>Double-crested Cormorant </li> - - <li><a href="/dialogues/laughing-gull">Laughing Gull</a> </li> - - <li>Least Tern </li> - - <li>Mourning Dove </li> - - <li><a href="/dialogues/northern-mockingbird">Northern Mockingbird</a> </li> - - <li>Prothonotary Warbler </li> - - <li>Royal Tern </li> - - <li>Ruddy Turnstone </li> - - <li>Sanderling </li> - - <li>Willet </li> - </ul> - </ul> - </aside> - - - </div> - </article> - - - <div class="nav-wrapper"> - <nav id="page-navigation" > - <ul> - <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2013/05/oysterman-wanted" rel="prev" title=" Oysterman Wanted">Oysterman Wanted</a> - </li> - <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2014/11/halloween" rel="next" title=" Halloween">Halloween</a> - </li> - </ul> - </nav> - </div> - - - - - - -<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> - -<div class="comment--form--header"> - <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> - <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> -</div> -<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> - -<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> - - - <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="154" id="id_object_pk"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833448" id="id_timestamp"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="d6bb06f310550d2938fa8d87477aa69dd7ca150f" id="id_security_hash"> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_name">Name:</label> - <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> - <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_url">URL:</label> - <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> - <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> -</textarea></div> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset style="display:none;"> - <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> - <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> - </fieldset> - - - <div class="submit"> - <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> - <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> - </div> -</form> -<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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-
-The setting sun is in our eyes. The birds are hard to see, moving far too fast to see any details about them. Some part of their head is a deep red color, you catch flashes of it when they come out of the sun. The rest of them is starkly black and white. I have ideas, but I don't know for sure. Shorebirds have never been my strong suit.
-
-My wife is searching Google images on her phone, but Google thinks that "tern" is a misspelling of "turn". Three more come by, sleek black and white birds with splashes of vermilion across their faces, skimming the shoreline in tight formation, beaks open, *skimming the water from time to time*.
-
-I have a bird book. It's at home on the sideboard. It's been too long since I did this sort of thing, birdwatching. It didn't occur to me that I might want the book. The binoculars are automatic, they nearly always make the trip even if they spend the majority of it tucked at the bottom of a bag or rattling around in an ammo can.
-
-I grew up birding. My father was a biologist. Birding was just one of many things we did on family hikes. There were plant pressings, lizards caught and sometimes kept. Snakes, snails, frogs, insects too. But I always liked watching the birds.
-
-There's something wonderfully ephemeral about watching birds. They're there, but then at any given moment they can flutter tiny wings and disappear into a thicket of trees, or swoop huge spans of wing that slowly and majestically lift their bodies up into the air until they become just a thin black line on the distant horizon.
-
-I may not have actually pursued identifications and list making much in my adult years, but I've never tired of watching birds be birds.
-
-I started traveling using my feet. Start where you are, with what you have right? I started hiking. I traveled to the Sierra Nevada, the Trinity Alps, the White Mountains, the deserts of Arizona, Utah and Colorado. I spent a lot of time out there on trails, resting on rocks, wondering, what is this thin wisp of plant clinging to life on the edge of a sandstone cliff? What is this hummingbird buzzing me like an angry hornet? Spend enough time outdoors and you become a naturalist.
-
-That I remain, after all these years, drawn to birds could be old habits not dying, but it could also be the simple fact that birds are everywhere. Even in the densest examples of human population where the crush of people is often literal, like [Ciudad de México](/jrnl/2018/09/big-exit) or the entrance to a subway in New York at rush hour, there are still birds there. Sparrows, pigeons, starlings. Survivors.
-
-Watching birds teaches you to see the world a bit differently. You're always alert to flittering movements in your peripheral vision. After a while you start to scan the tree line, the edges of the marsh, the place where the buildings meet the sky, the borderlands, the places where movement begins. You quite literally see the world differently.
-
-Birds lead you to look at the world differently, to be part of the world in ways that you are not without them. Birdwatching requires that you be both in your self, mindful and aware of your surroundings (lest you trip and fall, or worse), but also to be out of yourself, to be aware of the other and its movements, its awareness. It's a reminder that you are not just in the world, but an active part of it.
-
-Watching birds becomes a gateway to much more. You can't spend much time watching birds without starting to think about insects and sticks, bushes, trees, water, habitats, ecology, geography, weather, architecture. Everything on earth is intrinsically linked to everything else.
-
-Now that I have two young children I've decided to get back into the world of birding, identification, lists and all. In part because it's a good way to get out in nature. There's nothing that teaches so readily or excites children so much as nature.
-
-I want to be able to teach the art of birdwatching to my children. They're less than a year old right now, far too young to use binoculars or even pay attention to anything for more than a minute or two, but they already enjoy watching the robins and blue jays that prance on our deck at home.
-
-I'm not trying to get them bird watching right now though. I'm relearning the art myself. Relearning how to identify, how to observe birds and their world. You can't teach your children something if you aren't already well versed in it yourself. Moreover you can't hope to instill any sense of enthusiasm if you don't have it yourself. Even babies have powerfully accurate bullshit detectors.
-
-I don't necessarily care if my children get into birding or not. It's not the birds I'd like them to care about; it's the sense of curiosity about the world around them that I'd like to pass on. It's that sense of curiosity and wonder that makes bird watching worth doing and that curiosity carries will beyond the binocular lens. Bird watching is part of the lost art of paying attention to not just the world around you, but the details within that world, to stop, to watch, to make something else the center of your world for a few minutes and to consider its world, to see how it lives, what it does, what it wants, how it lives. To observe, to really watch. To record what you saw when it makes sense to do so and to just watch and enjoy when it doesn't. That's bird watching. At least that's what it means to me.
-
-I was brought up in nature -- birding, hiking, camping, backpacking, fishing, climbing, kayaking. These were the things my family did for fun. I want to create similar experiences for my kids, to take them out into nature to watch and identify wildlife, to cook on camp stoves, to smell wood fires warming coffee in the morning, to cozy up in a sleeping bag, to watch the stars from inside a tent, to hit the trails at dawn and head for the high country of the mountains because the high country is where human beings are meant to go, to push yourself, your knowledge of the world, your understanding and feeling of being alive beyond where it is today.
-
-The world is ever-changing, always new. There's always something enticing around the next bend. I don't want them to say, "look daddy, a bird", but "daddy, what kind of bird is that? What is it doing? Where is it going? Why is it doing that? Where does it sleep? What does it eat?" and the thousands of other questions a curious child will think of -- questions I can't even imagine.
-
-I'm not 100 percent sure yet what I think the role of a good parent is, but I lean toward this: that you point them in the right direction and get the hell out of the way. Answer the easy questions so that they have a start, and the confidence to start asking the really hard questions, the ones I can't answer.
-
-The best ways to get them started on the curiosity road is to get them out exploring the natural world, exploring it in detail, watching birds, hiking trails, climbing mountains, watching the pines sway in the wind while you eat lunch, seeing the stars through the screen of the tent, and all the other things I did and wished I had done as a child.
-
-But you can't teach your children these things if you don't do them yourself. If you don't have a curiosity about the world you won't be able to pass it along. You can't fake it.
-
-So I'm getting back into the natural world, into bird watching down here on the shores of the Gulf coast because I want to re-learn everything I once knew, still do know, buried somewhere deep down, and pull it back up to the surface so I can enjoy it again. Maybe I can even pass it on.
-
-I can remember a time when my whole world could momentarily be forgotten and everything about the world suddenly wrapped up in the skittish flitter of a warbler or a Sanderling darting the shoreline or a Black Skimmer, ahem, *skimming the shoreline*, its partly-red bill strikingly red against the blue of sea and sky, its mouth open as if trying to swallow the ocean whole. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/oysterman-wanted.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/oysterman-wanted.amp deleted file mode 100644 index 8fd1ee5..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/oysterman-wanted.amp +++ /dev/null @@ -1,195 +0,0 @@ - - -<!doctype html> -<html amp lang="en"> -<head> -<meta charset="utf-8"> -<title>Oysterman Wanted</title> -<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2013/05/oysterman-wanted"> - <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> - <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> - <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2013/05/oysterman-wanted"> - <meta name="twitter:description" content="Tourism does not create a demand for useful things. 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Doug arrives on St. George Island every morning and parks in a vacant lot just west of the bridge. Come 5 P.M., Doug heads back to Eastpoint. In the mean time Doug and his trailer sit in the vacant lot, which is, like all vacant lots and driveways in the area, covered with the local version of gravel -- oyster shells. </p> -<p>The shells give off a blinding white glare in the midday sun, driving you to the shade of the small awning Doug extends out to make the trailer more welcoming. As your eyes adjust to the shadows you'll notice Doug himself sitting on a red plastic folding chair, perched amongst half a dozen white plastic coolers stocked full of local shrimp, scallops, oysters, snapper, grouper and even local favorites like mullet, if you ask for it.</p> -<p>I first met Doug while on a quest for shrimp. Not a lot was said, though I do remember Doug offering his thoughts on the weather, which were wrong. In fact Doug's thoughts on the weather have been wrong pretty much every time I've heard them. But there aren't a lot of locals found on St. George and even most of the permanent residents aren't originally from the area. So I started talking to Doug in hopes of learning about the island and Apalachicola. I've gleaned a few things, but mostly I know a lot about Doug's bypass surgery or the liver trouble that made him stop eating raw oysters. Whatever the case I've noticed my trips to Doug's Seafood have become progressively longer and longer the more time I spend on the island.</p> -<p>Even if you never bother to talk to Doug you'll get to know a few of his thoughts just from standing there under the awning, reading what's scrawled across the side of the trailer. Thin permanent marker has been used to create a kind of unsolicited FAQ for potential customers -- "yes it's raw seafood", "yes you have to cook it first" and "no it's not ready to eat." There are probably half a dozen phrases altogether. None exactly rude, but all carrying a sense of exasperation and all pointed enough to make you stop and think about what you're about to ask before you ask it.</p> -<p>These are necessary, according to Doug, to make sure no one gets sick. They also probably help discourage the sort of poorly thought out questions that might irritate the sole proprietor of Doug's Seafood.</p> -<p>It seems to work. Doug manages to smile to nearly everyone and never so much as roles his eyes -- visibly anyway -- in the face of what I can only assume is a Herculean confrontation with <em>Tourist Americanus</em> that would leave many a lesser man indignantly scrawling even more magic marker across the side of the trailer. Or worse.</p> -<p>Doug does, if you talk about something other than the weather or his heart, come rather quickly around to the problems of the local area, which are unsurprisingly, all a result of tourism. He's never exactly moaned about tourists, but he does very nearly spit when he says the word, something I recognize from <a href="/2005/oct/20/twenty-more-minutes-go/">growing up in a seaside town</a> full of people who also simltaneously needed and disliked tourists. But of course here I'm a stranger here like the rest. I may know that I have to cook the shrimp, but otherwise I'm as much a part of Doug's problems as anyone else on St. George Island.</p> -<p><amp-img alt="Shrimp trawler, Apalachicola, FL" height="288" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/shrimpboatatthedocks.jpg" width="550"></amp-img></p> -<p>The problem is we've all become tourists. None of us are shrimpers or oystermen anymore. </p> -<p>That's why all coastal towns will eventually convert from real industries like fishing or shipping ports, to tourism-based economies. There's no stopping it. If your patch of coast hasn't done it yet, and this one is still holding out hope, it will. Best get your sarcastic FAQ boards painted now, before the tide of tourism washes the last of industry out to sea.</p> -<p>There's another sign I think about, just over the bridge in Eastpoint, <em>Oysterman Wanted</em> it reads. Every time I drive by I find myself wondering, will anyone ever call that number? <a href="/2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/">I love oysters</a>, especially fresh off the boat, but it seems like you might as well hang out a sign asking for cobblers or loom workers. </p> -<p>Part of me thinks that the sign is just there to bolster the local spirit. Apalachicola is doing an admirable job of fighting tooth and nail to keep things as they once were, when the Bay was full of oystermen and the horizon at night lit up with trawlers dragging their nets. But even people like Doug seem to know that world is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they're no longer fighting for their way of life. Nor are they even fighting to give their children some small slice of the life they loved. They're just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they've always known around until they leave this world. They're fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know.</p> -<p><amp-img alt="Storm over the docks, Apalachicola FL." height="297" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/stormoverthedocks.jpg" width="550"></amp-img></p> -<p>The world of oystermen and local fishing industry will fade away though. How could it not? Once there were loom workers, now there are not. Once there was a seemingly endless shoreline to dock a boat beside, soon there will be nothing but condos. Economies change; people change. And so it goes. </p> -<p>And yet, and yet. There's something that feels different about the way tourism grinds other things to dust. I think it's the finality of it. Once a place makes that transition, once the economy crosses that invisible threshold and goes full tourism there seems to be no coming back. So long as the tourists come everyone loves their new tourist economy. And then one day the tourists stop and the town dies. Ask the residents of the Salton Sea. Ask Mystic, Connecticut. Ask the Adirondacks. Coral Gables. Niagara Falls.</p> -<p><amp-img alt="Colorful buoys, Apalachicola, FL" height="309" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/buoys.jpg" width="550"></amp-img></p> -<p>Tourism is a fickle thing, but that's not really the long term problem if you live in a tourist economy. The problem is that tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and a finely sanded boardwalk for strolling are only useful things so long as there are tourists to buy and occupy them. </p> -<p>In the beginning there are always tourists, and in some places there seemingly always will be, but tourism is a marketing-driven economy and eventually someone else comes along with <a href="http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/dryworld/bahia-palace_05.html">better marketing and more money</a>. The hotels go vacant. Restaurant tables stand empty. Buildings fall into disrepair and soon all that's left are the facades, the boardwalks with faux pilings too weak to actually tie up a trawler and no one left who know how to sail one anyway.</p> -<p>It's hard work fishing; even harder to be an oysterman. I wouldn't do it; I doubt I could do it. Far easier to open a bar, build a new hotel or maybe sell trinkets just across from that really nice and shiny new boardwalk. </p> -<p>And so it goes.</p> - </div> - </article> -</main> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/oysterman-wanted.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/oysterman-wanted.html deleted file mode 100644 index a1ab875..0000000 --- a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2013/05/oysterman-wanted.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,382 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html -class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> - -<head> - <title>Oysterman Wanted - by Scott Gilbertson</title> - <meta charset="utf-8"> - <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> - <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> - <meta name="description" - content="Tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. 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Doug arrives on St. George Island every morning and parks in a vacant lot just west of the bridge. Come 5 P.M., Doug heads back to Eastpoint. In the mean time Doug and his trailer sit in the vacant lot, which is, like all vacant lots and driveways in the area, covered with the local version of gravel — oyster shells. </p> -<p>The shells give off a blinding white glare in the midday sun, driving you to the shade of the small awning Doug extends out to make the trailer more welcoming. As your eyes adjust to the shadows you’ll notice Doug himself sitting on a red plastic folding chair, perched amongst half a dozen white plastic coolers stocked full of local shrimp, scallops, oysters, snapper, grouper and even local favorites like mullet, if you ask for it.</p> -<p>I first met Doug while on a quest for shrimp. Not a lot was said, though I do remember Doug offering his thoughts on the weather, which were wrong. In fact Doug’s thoughts on the weather have been wrong pretty much every time I’ve heard them. But there aren’t a lot of locals found on St. George and even most of the permanent residents aren’t originally from the area. So I started talking to Doug in hopes of learning about the island and Apalachicola. I’ve gleaned a few things, but mostly I know a lot about Doug’s bypass surgery or the liver trouble that made him stop eating raw oysters. Whatever the case I’ve noticed my trips to Doug’s Seafood have become progressively longer and longer the more time I spend on the island.</p> -<p>Even if you never bother to talk to Doug you’ll get to know a few of his thoughts just from standing there under the awning, reading what’s scrawled across the side of the trailer. Thin permanent marker has been used to create a kind of unsolicited FAQ for potential customers — “yes it’s raw seafood”, “yes you have to cook it first” and “no it’s not ready to eat.” There are probably half a dozen phrases altogether. None exactly rude, but all carrying a sense of exasperation and all pointed enough to make you stop and think about what you’re about to ask before you ask it.</p> -<p>These are necessary, according to Doug, to make sure no one gets sick. They also probably help discourage the sort of poorly thought out questions that might irritate the sole proprietor of Doug’s Seafood.</p> -<p>It seems to work. Doug manages to smile to nearly everyone and never so much as roles his eyes — visibly anyway — in the face of what I can only assume is a Herculean confrontation with <em>Tourist Americanus</em> that would leave many a lesser man indignantly scrawling even more magic marker across the side of the trailer. Or worse.</p> -<p>Doug does, if you talk about something other than the weather or his heart, come rather quickly around to the problems of the local area, which are unsurprisingly, all a result of tourism. He’s never exactly moaned about tourists, but he does very nearly spit when he says the word, something I recognize from <a href="/2005/oct/20/twenty-more-minutes-go/">growing up in a seaside town</a> full of people who also simltaneously needed and disliked tourists. But of course here I’m a stranger here like the rest. I may know that I have to cook the shrimp, but otherwise I’m as much a part of Doug’s problems as anyone else on St. George Island.</p> -<p><img alt="Shrimp trawler, Apalachicola, FL" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/shrimpboatatthedocks.jpg"/></p> -<p>The problem is we’ve all become tourists. None of us are shrimpers or oystermen anymore. </p> -<p>That’s why all coastal towns will eventually convert from real industries like fishing or shipping ports, to tourism-based economies. There’s no stopping it. If your patch of coast hasn’t done it yet, and this one is still holding out hope, it will. Best get your sarcastic FAQ boards painted now, before the tide of tourism washes the last of industry out to sea.</p> -<p>There’s another sign I think about, just over the bridge in Eastpoint, <em>Oysterman Wanted</em> it reads. Every time I drive by I find myself wondering, will anyone ever call that number? <a href="/2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/">I love oysters</a>, especially fresh off the boat, but it seems like you might as well hang out a sign asking for cobblers or loom workers. </p> -<p>Part of me thinks that the sign is just there to bolster the local spirit. Apalachicola is doing an admirable job of fighting tooth and nail to keep things as they once were, when the Bay was full of oystermen and the horizon at night lit up with trawlers dragging their nets. But even people like Doug seem to know that world is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they’re no longer fighting for their way of life. Nor are they even fighting to give their children some small slice of the life they loved. They’re just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they’ve always known around until they leave this world. They’re fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know.</p> -<p><img alt="Storm over the docks, Apalachicola FL." class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/stormoverthedocks.jpg"/></p> -<p>The world of oystermen and local fishing industry will fade away though. How could it not? Once there were loom workers, now there are not. Once there was a seemingly endless shoreline to dock a boat beside, soon there will be nothing but condos. Economies change; people change. And so it goes. </p> -<p>And yet, and yet. There’s something that feels different about the way tourism grinds other things to dust. I think it’s the finality of it. Once a place makes that transition, once the economy crosses that invisible threshold and goes full tourism there seems to be no coming back. So long as the tourists come everyone loves their new tourist economy. And then one day the tourists stop and the town dies. Ask the residents of the Salton Sea. Ask Mystic, Connecticut. Ask the Adirondacks. Coral Gables. Niagara Falls.</p> -<p><img alt="Colorful buoys, Apalachicola, FL" class="picfull" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2013/buoys.jpg"/></p> -<p>Tourism is a fickle thing, but that’s not really the long term problem if you live in a tourist economy. The problem is that tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and a finely sanded boardwalk for strolling are only useful things so long as there are tourists to buy and occupy them. </p> -<p>In the beginning there are always tourists, and in some places there seemingly always will be, but tourism is a marketing-driven economy and eventually someone else comes along with <a href="http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/dryworld/bahia-palace_05.html">better marketing and more money</a>. The hotels go vacant. Restaurant tables stand empty. Buildings fall into disrepair and soon all that’s left are the facades, the boardwalks with faux pilings too weak to actually tie up a trawler and no one left who know how to sail one anyway.</p> -<p>It’s hard work fishing; even harder to be an oysterman. I wouldn’t do it; I doubt I could do it. Far easier to open a bar, build a new hotel or maybe sell trinkets just across from that really nice and shiny new boardwalk. </p> -<p>And so it goes.</p> - </div> - <div class="entry-footer"> - <aside id="wildlife"> - <h3>Fauna and Flora</h3> - - <ul> - - <li class="grouper">Birds<ul> - - <li>Brown Pelican </li> - - <li>Double-crested Cormorant </li> - - <li><a href="/dialogues/laughing-gull">Laughing Gull</a> </li> - - <li>Least Tern </li> - - <li>Mourning Dove </li> - - <li><a href="/dialogues/northern-mockingbird">Northern Mockingbird</a> </li> - - <li>Prothonotary Warbler </li> - - <li>Royal Tern </li> - - <li>Ruddy Turnstone </li> - - <li>Sanderling </li> - - <li>Willet </li> - </ul> - </ul> - </aside> - - - </div> - </article> - - - <div class="nav-wrapper"> - <nav id="page-navigation" > - <ul> - <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2013/05/all-the-pretty-beaches" rel="prev" title=" All the Pretty Beaches">All the Pretty Beaches</a> - </li> - <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> - <a href="/jrnl/2013/05/king-birds" rel="next" title=" King of Birds">King of Birds</a> - </li> - </ul> - </nav> - </div> - - - - - - -<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> - -<div class="comment--form--header"> - <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> - <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> -</div> -<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> - -<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> - - - <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="134" id="id_object_pk"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833449" id="id_timestamp"> - - - - <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="7de2e1b06cb40fc17e4f199ba3ddc52872f81dd6" id="id_security_hash"> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_name">Name:</label> - <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> - <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_url">URL:</label> - <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset > - <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> - <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> -</textarea></div> - </fieldset> - - - - <fieldset style="display:none;"> - <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> - <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> - </fieldset> - - - <div class="submit"> - <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> - <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> - </div> -</form> -<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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-
-Doug's Seafood trailer is just that, an unassuming yellow trailer with red trim and lettering that reads, appropriately, *Doug's Seafood*. Doug arrives on St. George Island every morning and parks in a vacant lot just west of the bridge. Come 5 P.M., Doug heads back to Eastpoint. In the mean time Doug and his trailer sit in the vacant lot, which is, like all vacant lots and driveways in the area, covered with the local version of gravel -- oyster shells.
-
-The shells give off a blinding white glare in the midday sun, driving you to the shade of the small awning Doug extends out to make the trailer more welcoming. As your eyes adjust to the shadows you'll notice Doug himself sitting on a red plastic folding chair, perched amongst half a dozen white plastic coolers stocked full of local shrimp, scallops, oysters, snapper, grouper and even local favorites like mullet, if you ask for it.
-
-I first met Doug while on a quest for shrimp. Not a lot was said, though I do remember Doug offering his thoughts on the weather, which were wrong. In fact Doug's thoughts on the weather have been wrong pretty much every time I've heard them. But there aren't a lot of locals found on St. George and even most of the permanent residents aren't originally from the area. So I started talking to Doug in hopes of learning about the island and Apalachicola. I've gleaned a few things, but mostly I know a lot about Doug's bypass surgery or the liver trouble that made him stop eating raw oysters. Whatever the case I've noticed my trips to Doug's Seafood have become progressively longer and longer the more time I spend on the island.
-
-Even if you never bother to talk to Doug you'll get to know a few of his thoughts just from standing there under the awning, reading what's scrawled across the side of the trailer. Thin permanent marker has been used to create a kind of unsolicited FAQ for potential customers -- "yes it's raw seafood", "yes you have to cook it first" and "no it's not ready to eat." There are probably half a dozen phrases altogether. None exactly rude, but all carrying a sense of exasperation and all pointed enough to make you stop and think about what you're about to ask before you ask it.
-
-These are necessary, according to Doug, to make sure no one gets sick. They also probably help discourage the sort of poorly thought out questions that might irritate the sole proprietor of Doug's Seafood.
-
-It seems to work. Doug manages to smile to nearly everyone and never so much as roles his eyes -- visibly anyway -- in the face of what I can only assume is a Herculean confrontation with *Tourist Americanus* that would leave many a lesser man indignantly scrawling even more magic marker across the side of the trailer. Or worse.
-
-Doug does, if you talk about something other than the weather or his heart, come rather quickly around to the problems of the local area, which are unsurprisingly, all a result of tourism. He's never exactly moaned about tourists, but he does very nearly spit when he says the word, something I recognize from [growing up in a seaside town][2] full of people who also simltaneously needed and disliked tourists. But of course here I'm a stranger here like the rest. I may know that I have to cook the shrimp, but otherwise I'm as much a part of Doug's problems as anyone else on St. George Island.
-
-<img class="picfull" src="[[base_url]]2013/shrimpboatatthedocks.jpg" alt="Shrimp trawler, Apalachicola, FL" />
-
-The problem is we've all become tourists. None of us are shrimpers or oystermen anymore.
-
-That's why all coastal towns will eventually convert from real industries like fishing or shipping ports, to tourism-based economies. There's no stopping it. If your patch of coast hasn't done it yet, and this one is still holding out hope, it will. Best get your sarcastic FAQ boards painted now, before the tide of tourism washes the last of industry out to sea.
-
-There's another sign I think about, just over the bridge in Eastpoint, *Oysterman Wanted* it reads. Every time I drive by I find myself wondering, will anyone ever call that number? [I love oysters][1], especially fresh off the boat, but it seems like you might as well hang out a sign asking for cobblers or loom workers.
-
-Part of me thinks that the sign is just there to bolster the local spirit. Apalachicola is doing an admirable job of fighting tooth and nail to keep things as they once were, when the Bay was full of oystermen and the horizon at night lit up with trawlers dragging their nets. But even people like Doug seem to know that world is doomed. Even the people resisting the transition know they're no longer fighting for their way of life. Nor are they even fighting to give their children some small slice of the life they loved. They're just fighting to keep the thinnest resemblance of what they've always known around until they leave this world. They're fighting to keep from having to watch the death of everything they know.
-
-<img class="picfull" src="[[base_url]]2013/stormoverthedocks.jpg" alt="Storm over the docks, Apalachicola FL." />
-
-The world of oystermen and local fishing industry will fade away though. How could it not? Once there were loom workers, now there are not. Once there was a seemingly endless shoreline to dock a boat beside, soon there will be nothing but condos. Economies change; people change. And so it goes.
-
-And yet, and yet. There's something that feels different about the way tourism grinds other things to dust. I think it's the finality of it. Once a place makes that transition, once the economy crosses that invisible threshold and goes full tourism there seems to be no coming back. So long as the tourists come everyone loves their new tourist economy. And then one day the tourists stop and the town dies. Ask the residents of the Salton Sea. Ask Mystic, Connecticut. Ask the Adirondacks. Coral Gables. Niagara Falls.
-
-<img class="picfull" src="[[base_url]]2013/buoys.jpg" alt="Colorful buoys, Apalachicola, FL" />
-
-Tourism is a fickle thing, but that's not really the long term problem if you live in a tourist economy. The problem is that tourism does not create a demand for useful things. Oysters are useful things. Shrimp are useful things. Colorful buoys and a finely sanded boardwalk for strolling are only useful things so long as there are tourists to buy and occupy them.
-
-In the beginning there are always tourists, and in some places there seemingly always will be, but tourism is a marketing-driven economy and eventually someone else comes along with [better marketing and more money][3]. The hotels go vacant. Restaurant tables stand empty. Buildings fall into disrepair and soon all that's left are the facades, the boardwalks with faux pilings too weak to actually tie up a trawler and no one left who know how to sail one anyway.
-
-It's hard work fishing; even harder to be an oysterman. I wouldn't do it; I doubt I could do it. Far easier to open a bar, build a new hotel or maybe sell trinkets just across from that really nice and shiny new boardwalk.
-
-And so it goes.
-
-[1]: /2013/may/22/consider-the-apalachicola-oyster/
-[2]: /2005/oct/20/twenty-more-minutes-go/
-[3]: http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/dryworld/bahia-palace_05.html |