Living in Florida, i have learned not to yearn for things past. Reality is too fluid here. Memories of landscape must be altered weekly: Oh, a new school! When did this road become six lanes? Was that Mexican restaurant here last week? Or that hospital? We learn not to take an undiscovered parcel of paradise for granted because we realize we may return one day and find it supplanted by a Club Med. Such is the price for living in a place where mangoes grow and the hibiscus bloom year-round.

I had not been to Boca Grande in 15 years, since my first date with my now-wife, Carol, and I had no desire to return because I feared the worst. During boat trips to nearby Cayo Costa I'd noticed how condos had now formed on the southern end of the island, dense as barnacles.

I preferred to remember the island of Boca Grande as it was: The shady respite of Banyan Street and its cathedral-like canopy of trees so dense and twisting it reminded me of a fairy-tale setting . the languid iguanas that warmed themselves in the middle of roads because cars were so few . a time-warp lunch at the Temptation Restaurant in the one-block downtown. This restaurant was perhaps the Gulfshore's most sublime anachronism, with vinyl booths along the wall and walls adorned with hand-painted beach and fishing scenes. Pale waiters with conservative haircuts and somewhat creepy, Mad Hatter smiles wheeled your bouillabaisse salad from the kitchen on a wobbly tea cart, even if that was the only thing they had to deliver. And as you dug into a healthy mound of lettuces and chilled shrimp and fresh crab and artichoke hearts coated in a creamy remoulade, you could not help but notice that you were the only person in the restaurant not wearing a collared shirt . not over 60 years old . and not partaking of a 1:30 p.m. gin-and-tonic or glass of chardonnay.

For so long, Boca Grande was hidden and safe. It was mainly boaters who visited. Though much of the island rests in Lee County, to reach it one must drive nearly the entire length of undeveloped Charlotte County before paying $3.50 to cross an antiquated swivel-style drawbridge.

Then came President George H.W. Bush, who, along with the White House press corps, discovered it as a sort of Kennebunkport South. Next: an ebullient story in the travel section of The New York Times. Add to that the nouveau-riche, my-house-is-bigger-than-yours decade of the '90s, and I figured the island was doomed.

I am back now, squinting behind my dark glasses, almost grimacing in anticipation of finding vulgarities. I reach for my microcassette player. In my fiction-writer's mind, pertinent but oddly timed nuggets often float, uninvited, into my consciousness, like beach balls spotted on a river, and if I do not snatch and record them, they will be gone forever, out to sea. I push the square, orange record button: "Oh, no, there are signs at the foot of the bridge announcing that we're under video surveillance. There are two Lexus SUVs ahead of me. One has gold deluxe-edition accents. Yuck."

I wind my way onto the island, passing homes and condo enclaves on the Gulf side, most of them protected by walls and manicured vegetation.

"There are more sculpted hedges now," I say into the machine. "Oh, man! I hear a leaf blower! There are leaf blowers on Boca Grande!"

I begin to mellow as I start passing bikes, bikes and more bikes on the wide path that parallels the road for the length of the island. A golf cart materializes from one of the side streets, still marked by homemade, wooden, sun-faded signs. The cart is decorated with pink balloons and occupied by four laughing, blonde teenage girls. "Someone's birthday," I say. "Girls who look like Vanderbilts."

I pass the historic, pale-yellow Gasparilla Inn with its neoclassical façade, the home away from home for many wealthy industrialists of the early 20th century. Turning down a side road, I am pleased to find the Bermuda-grass croquet court intact.

"Golf carts outnumber cars," I soon say. "This is a good thing."

Downtown, I park on the one-block main street and begin to explore. Everything certainly looks the same, all the old, white, clapboard-style buildings. And there's the historic Fugate's department store, which now sells blown glass and high-end magazines and tropical-motif resort wear. A sign in the front door announces they stock The New York Times.

Near the historic, pink-stucco train depot, I find women's-clothing shops, and, not far away, a jewelry store that offers diamonds, emeralds, black pearls. The nearby Boca Grande Outfitters stocks Patagonia, Oakley and expensive fly-fishing equipment. At The Barnichol hardware store you can buy a pair of pliers or talking beer-bottle openers that cheer and play university fight songs. You could spend a half-day in these stores that mix utility with extravagance. Everywhere, I see beautiful families with strong, white teeth; women with little or no makeup; simple, not trendy, eyewear; practical but expensive shoes; British-looking strollers whose worn, grayed wheels reveal a multi-generational legacy.

I reach for my tape recorder: "Boca has become the Gulfshore's Hyannis Port."

After I've bought a turquoise Columbia fishing shirt for my wife, I head to the southern tip of the island, where I saw all the condo development from the boat. I pass several public, beach-side parks and I'm pleased to note they're all owned by the state, all randomly dotted with clumps of sea oats and sabal palms. Thankfully, the parking lots are natural gravel. I pass two iguanas and smile.

But the condos . surely these aren't the ones I spotted from the water. Yet they are, and what looked like cancer from far away appears benign up close. Though two stories, they're scrunched together, all gray and dull and brown and tan, downright squatty, like someone hunching his head into his shoulders to avoid detection. It looks like government housing for the affluent, nothing like the obnoxious, pink McMansions on many Florida islands.

I walk all the way to the southern tip of the island, where the historic lighthouse and museum are dwarfed by the immense, round, green tanks used to store fuel for the nearby FPL power plant, the only blemish I remember on this island. Except I cannot find the tanks, which I remember being as large as a Radisson.

I stand at land's end, looking out at the dangerous, roiling waters of the pass that is famous for its tarpon. I know they're here somewhere, these tanks. Can I be that disoriented?

I hear a hammer; two construction workers are building something adjacent to the lighthouse. I walk over to talk with them and soon discover these will soon be new public bathrooms . and that the tanks are gone . Gone! . and that this tip of the island is going to be, of all things in this era of the Great Land Grab, a public park. Right here, on perhaps the most expensive, exquisite piece of property on the entire Gulfshore.

Buoyed by this news, I take my chances and decide to stop for a late lunch at The Temptation. At my request, the waiter seats me at the very table Carol and I occupied 15 years ago. I look around. Nothing has changed. Absolutely nothing.

As I wait for my bouillabaisse salad, I open a copy of the local newspaper, The Boca Beacon. I always read the editorial pages of local newspapers; they reveal a community's hopes and concerns and customs. This issue is filled with letters to the editor decrying and threatening legal action against an entrepreneur who wants to open up a Subway sandwich shop on this franchise-free island. Yet I have no worries. Not after today. When Old Money goes up against New, the former-thank God-generally wins.

I look across the room, at two older ladies having lunch in a booth against the wall. In the heat of September, they wear dresses and hose, and their faces appear to be freshly powdered and to have never seen the sun. Their cocktail glasses, the rims stained with red lipstick, are nearly empty.

My stare finally snags their attention. I smile and hold up my glass of cold white wine in a toast. They are full-time residents, I am certain, and I want to connect in a silent thank-you and appreciative salute. The women look at each other at first, quizzically, before they giggle and then slowly, self-consciously hoist their glasses aloft to meet mine.

Ad Hudler is a novelist who lives in Fort Myers. His latest book is Southern Living, published by Ballantine Books. Readers can reach him through his Web site, www.adhudler.com.