I think it was dumb luck rather than prescience but last summer my wife and I decided to take a cottage in the Florida Keys for a month starting in February. By mid-January we were packed and ready to leave as the winter this year has been particularly brutal with its high winds and cold temperatures. So it was with great joy and anticipation that we loaded up our Subaru wagon with bikes, snorkeling gear, flip-flops and our dog on Tuesday to make the 1,500 mile drive down from Connecticut to the Keys. We decided to take a combination of back roads as well as interstates to keep the drive interesting and on the way down see how the outside world was greening up as we made it further south.
I was hoping for a quick green up to alter my perspective of an ice and snow covered existence and was presently surprised at the first rest stop in New Jersey. We needed to take our dog Daisy out for a walk and I found a small growing patch of grass adjacent to a restaurant building. I suspect that the 50’s style building was leaking so much heat that this little micro-climate permitted the rye to flourish, but I took it as a good sign of things to come.
Unfortunately for hundreds of miles that was far from the case. A freak storm had dumped inches of snow in the mid-Atlantic states and mile after mile of driving reminded me more and more of cold and crusty New England than a genteel and warm South. Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia were covered in snow with only the major roads being plowed. At least half of the store parking lots and all the side roads were an ugly brown mess of slush and snow.
As we stopped at another rest stop, however, I did see a patch of green under a pine tree. It was a wild mint that acted as a ground cover that had been shielded from the snow. I squeezed its leaves and square stem between my fingers and out wafted the aroma of mint. Though the snow was four inches deep, I could see that fresh vegetation was not too far off.
But it would be even more miles for greens to better express themselves. Virginia offered nothing to us except more snow and northern North Carolina was much the same. The grass and much of the vegetation was brown. It didn’t look much different than up in New England. We started to think, “why are we going south?”
As we reached the middle of North Carolina, the hope for a more temperate climate was realized as the temperature climbed into the 40s and the snow dissipated. When we reached South Carolina, the snow was gone and the grass was green. Georgia was more of the same and when we crossed the border of Florida the palm trees greeted us with a temperature of 60 degrees.
We are taking a rest day in Gainesville, Fl., today at my sister- and brother-in-laws’ house happy to be off the road and in a house that is surrounded by lush growth. Today’s juice was squeezed from fruit harvested from my brother-in-law’s tangerine tree. There is a large rosemary bush outside whose fresh needles evoke the memories of roasted chicken and turkey. An oregano plant is full and fragrant and there are flowers and fat buds on the peach tree. Dandelions have started to flower and a neighbor has put up a border of pansies near the street. A dead cotton plant needs to be harvested of its fluffy white balls of fabric to be. Many of the deciduous trees are leafless though a myriad of green and gray epiphytes lazily hang from their branches readying themselves for a later bloom. Fresh crabgrass is pushing its shoots past a dormant and domesticated alternative.
Now that the temperature is in the mid 60s, I can sit in the back yard taking in the scents and sights of a land uncompromised by ice and cold. Tomorrow we finish our journey to the Keys and say so long to our socks and Polar Tec and hello to banana trees, papayas, bougainvillea and sunsets in shorts.
