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Keys

Of the Florida Keys, Hemingway said ""It's as if an imagination is intermingling salt water with desert, sea with plain, creatures of the deep with creatures of the bush." My first visit here was in late '99 if memory serves. The conditions of my life were very different than from today. I recall vividly that feeling of exuberance driving into the ocean through a corridor of tropical green some blooming with bright flowers. The sand and the water always with reach. If we had to stop at every spot that looked inviting we would be on the road for weeks. 

Yet, we did make many stops and I collected shells and pieces of driftwood as I always do when by the ocean. I loved that trip and have the fondest recollections of it but it was as if I had been there alone. The years that followed blotted out all memories of my traveling companion - the man who would be the father of J. Life partnership I would discover can be a mirage. You chase what you believe may be perfect only to end up in an aching void. 

This summer I was at the Keys once again. The place has changed beyond belief. There is hardly anywhere along the stretch from Miami to Key West where the road tempted me to stop; enjoy nature in solitude. Commercialization has turned the endless miles of green on US-1 into a patchwork of beach residences interrupted by nature. Fortunately the ocean is still the emerald green as I remembered and magic of the Keys remains intact inside the beautiful national parks in the area where we spent a lot of time. This trip was about nostalgia for the Keys that I once saw close to twenty years ago. The one that flashes back in vivid color every time I hear The Beach Boys sing Kokomo

That magic is mostly lost but this is a place so overabundant in natural beauty that it is impossible not to love even what remains today. This summer I saw the Keys through new eyes - mine and those with whom I traveled. I will remember this trip very differently than the first one. Instead of gaps in memory where loved ones should have been, this time reminiscences will remain whole.

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