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Here and NowBy: Karen T. BartlettWill Bush Man Savor Paradise Today? |
I do love traveling to primitive places and sinking deep into the culture, but, I admit, for shorter and shorter periods as time passes. I’ve not minded at all the recent assignments compelling me to float among rose petals in aromatherapy baths and drift into oblivion from here to Paris, as precious oils were massaged ever so gently into my skin. Yes, I adore spas, down pillows, tinkly silver bells to summon service, and impeccably dressed people who bow and say, "My pleasure." I love endless hot water and clothes that aren’t all the identical shade of brown from washing at the community spigot. And sometimes a cool, darkened theater is so much nicer than the pitch-dark path to the spider hut, which also serves as a latrine.
If you’re with me on this, you’ll love this frankly decadent issue of
Gulfshore Life. It’s full of marble halls and gracious service and the over-the-top pampering that we all so richly deserve.But here’s the thing: Bush Man Chris recently packed up his woven mats, tribal fighting sticks, his beloved old euphonium and 50 pounds of research material and headed to Australia to prepare his thesis on sustainable mariculture in indigenous societies, or something like that. He’ll live in a real house, with an actual refrigerator. But he says he’s still a Bush Man at heart, and furthermore, he’s coming home to this place that’s far more gentrified than he left it four years ago.
What will I feed him? Will he want laplap (don’t ask) for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Will he be able to find Banana Republic in the glitzy maze of the posh new Waterside Shops? Will he miss his exit on the interstate because all the numbers have changed? What will he make of all the palatial Italianate enclaves that have risen like Atlantis from the sea?
Luckily, the essence of the paradise where he grew up and fell in love with the tropical ecology still defines our world here. The sun still sets in heart-stopping glory over pristine beaches. The mama alligator that once chased him along a mangrove path for venturing too close to her babies is still in residence, with a whole new nest of babies. Lush rookeries in the Ten Thousand Islands are still teeming with great blue herons and snowy egrets. A flock of white ibis still struts across our back lawn. We can still pick out Orion’s belt in a night sky unspoiled by big city lights. And my grown-up island child, who rescued his first loggerhead hatchling with biologists on Sanibel Island at age 15, will return a biologist himself, just as thousands of tiny new hatchlings begin exploding from their sandy nests for their first frenetic crawl to the sea.When he’s not busy connecting with family and friends, maybe we’ll paddle that same route down the Estero River, from Bonita Springs to the Gulf of Mexico, that he, his sister, Sarah, and I discovered on Thanksgiving Day a decade ago. We might do a jazz crawl—maybe he’ll jam with some of the musicians he once performed beside in the Naples Concert Band and some well-known musicians new to the Southwest Florida scene. He’ll surely go looking for his old barber shop. It’s a real one, with a red and white pole and yellowed high school sports clippings taped to the walls. Bud (and his successor, Raleigh, and now Cory) gave out free haircuts for straight As and touchdowns.
And, for the pièce de résistance, we’ll sign up for Clyde Butcher’s famous Cypress Swamp Muck-About, where my Bush Man can slog hip-deep through Everglades muck and commune with random swamp creatures, including the world-famous photographer himself (below), who still shoots with one of those enormous large-format cameras, with the gargantuan tripod, bellows and hood for long exposures. It’s a magnificent three-day swamp odyssey, with Old Florida "cracker" music, cracker food and tours of Clyde and Nikki Butcher’s Big Cypress Gallery beyond the outer limits of civilization. Our $20 tickets will also get us real cypress-swamp walking sticks (we’ll need them) and a place for (cold) showers. Oh yes, we’ll definitely need those. A change of clothes and a disposable camera are essential. Reservations are required, and for all the muckiness of it, the slots fill up fast. Call for dates, (888) 999-9113 or (239) 695-2428.So while I may have to ease my Bush Man into the culture shock of our world-class new airport, hundreds of Mediterranean-hued shops and the shiny new I-75 exit at Golden Gate Parkway, I’ll feed him ripe mangoes (his favorite) right off the trees from Pine Island and introduce him to a spectacular osprey-with-attitude who hangs out in a dead tree not far from our house. My newly re-civilized adventurer can practice sleeping without a mosquito net over his head, and when he leaves me again—no matter for how long—I hope it will be with a heart full of reminders of this paradise he’ll always call home.
August! A glorious month, indeed. I shall—and I hope you will—savor the moment.
