Merry Christmas

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Holidays. For those of you who don’t recognize the picture, this is where I used to live, where I grew up. I took this picture, and the other winter ones below, in early 2006, over ten years ago. The broken railings are from a tree that fell on the house while I was away at college. Since then, I’ve spent most of my winters in warmer climes. Winter in South Florida is rather different. It rarely gets cold enough for frost, and snow is now a distant memory.

Do I miss New England? In many ways, yes. You learn to live with the cold if you’ve lived with it all your life. I’m still very much a northerner in attitude, even though I’ve lived down here now for eight years. When I was teaching undergraduate university classes, I would laugh at my students when they came to class dressed like they were ready to cross the Arctic tundra, while I was sometimes still in shorts (though not always), considering it was only 50ºF out.

I miss being able to play in the snow, even if you came back inside cold and wet, because you could sit and warm up with some hot chocolate. I miss watching the leaves change color. I even miss some of the flora that we just don’t have in Florida. Like the hemlock trees, Tsuga spp., that are everywhere. Some of my friends down here hadn’t even heard of hemlock (neither the trees, nor the poisonous plant, Conium maculatum, that they resemble).

I don’t miss the inevitable potholes and frost heaves that winter brings, though I didn’t have to deal with them as much considering I continued to take public transit to school even through my senior year in high school.

Do I regret moving down here? No. Where else could you observe a flock of roseate spoonbills, Platalea ajaja, one of the most interesting and bizarre looking birds (actually several places, but not many in the United States).

The avian and reptilian fauna here are unrivaled. I can look out my window as I write this and potentially see a Florida softshell turtle, Apalone ferox, in the pond next to where I live.

There are gopher tortoises, Gopherus polyphemus, in the uplands and the beach dunes.

There is so much interesting wildlife here, I doubt I could ever be able to share it all with you. But going forward, I will continue to share what I can because natural Florida lends itself to stories and telling nature stories is something I love to do.