What is “My Florida”? As a college student I thought my Florida was the Panhandle. It didn’t snow, there were white sand beaches and when I asked at the first gun shop if they needed to see my permit to handle a shotgun; The women behind the counter laughed and said “honey you can keep a loaded pistol in your glove box with no permit here”. What money I had left after text books, rent, and bushwhackers I spent chasing redfish in pensacola pass and kingfish from the pier. There were bears, and alligators, and old stone forts that predated our nation. This would certainly be my Florida. Moving to…
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My Florida: Nyla Pipes
If you look up the word “home” in the dictionary, you will find many definitions. It can be defined as a structure in which to reside, a city, state, or country of origin, or as something that strikes deeply and “hits home”. It can also be described as the place you feel most comfortable, surrounded by family, friends, and community. These definitions apply to my Florida, my adopted home. Home can also be defined as an animal’s tendency to return to its place of belonging, its ability to sense a deep connection to their place, their land, and home in on it time and time again. Recently someone looked at…
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My Florida: Dan Daniels
Welcome to “Sabal Palm Island”, an exquisite resort community in the heart of Central Florida! Can’t you just picture it, driving south down the Turnpike, around the greater Orlando area, a billboard somewhere near the Okahumpka rest station flagging to would be vacationers and potential residents? The billboard is backdropped by a cattle pasture with some heavy equipment off in the distance. This billboard doesn’t exist, at least to my knowledge it doesn’t exist, but we can all probably envision it in some form. This fictitious community is obviously gated, has all the amenities that any resort community would have. the residents give off a kind of “Del Boca Vista”…
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My Florida: Brad Phares
She’s a shimmering bit of Heaven here on Earth. A beguiling beauty cloaked in her morasses and marshy soils. A fortunate few of us see through the disguise realizing that all of it only adds to her charm and we fall hard for her, captivated and spellbound. This temptress is My Florida, My Love. So many other people, most of whom have only gazed upon, objectified, and yearned her from afar, see an idealized vision of her in the same manner which they falsely assume to intimately know distant celebrities whom they’ve never met. And predictably, they succumb to their curiosity and craving for the misguided mental image flocking to…
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My Florida: Josh Wynne
In September of 1620, Christopher Martin and his young wife, Marie Prower, arrived on the shores of Plymouth, Massachusetts on a ship known as The Mayflower. The ship left port in Essex, England and had been at sea for 66 days on this, the third attempt at crossing the Atlantic to reach The New World. Of the 102 passengers that arrived, only 53 of them survived the first winter. Only five among them were women. These survivors had grit. Christopher Martin would sign the Mayflower Compact and move to Salem, where he started his family. Over the next 160 years, the Martin’s became the Bishop’s, and the Bishop’s became the…
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My Florida: Elizabeth Bland
When asked to finish the sentence, “My Florida is _____.” I initially struggled. Is it an actual location? Is it an area? Am I restricted from claiming a certain place as “My Florida” because I was not originally born there? Can I only claim the Jacksonville area because that is my birthplace? Clearly the ending to that statement did not come as easy to me as I thought it would. I have thought about an answer to this question for a several weeks now. My Florida is not white, sandy, freshly raked beaches with well-groomed palm trees. It is dirt roads, river swamps, old oak hammocks, and coastlines that have…
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My Florida
Good states are hard to find. That’s a phrase that’s been rattling around in my head for months. We love Florida . . . it’s who we are . . . It’s part of our makeup, our DNA. From summer thunderstorms to wintering waterfowl . . . tarpon off the beaches, dolphins chasing mullet, snook under the mangroves . . . so many shellcrackers bedding that you can smell them . . . Osceolas somehow gobbling in surround sound, coming from every direction at once . . . Panthers and manatees and snail kites . . . Snapper and specks . . . Palmettos and palm trees and wild blackberries…
