Seeing things, or Devastation, Part I

I don't go to south Florida much and I don't like it when I do go. The last time was for the OAS protest in June. It was right off the highway in Ft. Lauderdale so, in many ways, it was just another Florida road trip from city to highway to city and back again.

This road trip was different because it required traversing about 25 miles of two-lane highway, bordered on either side by shimmering swamp land, little pools of unearthly peace dotted with egrets and other water birds that my limited knowledge of Florida wildlife prevents me from identifying with any degree of certainty.

I've always been a mountains kind of gal. I never saw the attraction to endless miles of unbroken scrub palmetto and ancient, mold-covered cypress trees which, as a rule, generally don't look alive enough to cut the mustard as organic matter. I don't like palm trees. I loathe flat-land. And there is nothing remotely seductive about air so oppressively damp that you can't go out for a pack of smokes without a wet suit and an oxygen tank. Florida's infamous "Alligator Alley" was not something to be tackled without a good book - that was my take on the matter.

Until today. And thank heavens I saw it today, because in six months the landscape will be changed...and not for the better.

This post is about Immokalee, but it will need to be a two-part post. Because there is devastation and there is devastation, and they are related, but they are not the same.

The devastation I expected to see from the hurricane was, perhaps, further south, although the closer we got to Immokalee, the more downed trees and power lines we saw. Shingles and debris littered the sides of the road, but of course it always does - human debris is omnipresent, hurricane or no.

The devastation I didn't expect to see was caused by treeless subdivisions and soulless developers, and unlike a downed palm tree or a stray shingle, it cannot be cleaned up by the most zealous waste removal effort. It cannot be fixed by people. It has been caused by people, and only time will tell if Mother Nature can fix what we have done.

First there is a placid pool with water lilies and a snowy egret picking his way delicately through the marsh. Then the marsh thickets give way a bit, and you can see the houses...hundreds of them...marching like army ants across a barren scar of ground, consuming everything in their path. No trees. No life. Just parched landfill with a block of concrete stuck on the top of it. But the concrete is more organic than the remaining cypress trees, because it apparently is capable of reproduction at a rate that would make a rabbit blush.

Others have written about this and I am sure they have noted, as I did, the calculating irony of calling a subdivision "Woodridge" when there is neither wood nor ridge to be found for miles. It is painful. But it is not as painful as the "For sale - 10 Acres - Wooded Lots!" signs that poked out of the land that hadn't been decimated yet. Every quarter mile or so of undeveloped land there was another sign. And although I know that a pesticide-laden orange grove is no better for the environment than a concrete dead-zone, I breathed a sigh of relief when we finally reached the farm land. At least there were trees. At least there was that.

I found myself wondering how many places people need to live. How many homes? How many condos? How many apartment complexes? Jesus God in Heaven, how many of us are there and why do we have to take up so much space? The "single-family" homes being built are large enough to house two or three families...so why don't they? Who is moving into these homes? Mom and Pop freshly arrived from New Jersey, looking forward to spending what remains of their earthly existence playing golf and tending their lawns. Biff and Muffy and their 2.5 adorable children who must each have their own space because we're Americans, goddamit, and we don't share because we don't have to...at least not as long as there is something, anything lower on the food chain that we can kill in order to satisfy our insatiable "needs." Dick and Jane, middle-aged professionals from the Heartland, who need a second home in Florida because...well...because Bob and Mary next door have one. That's who. People just like you and me...unfortunately, just like us.

In our typical American-child-in-a-china-shop way, we are not mindful of waste or the sacredness of the ground beneath us. We have no sense of economy, of only taking what we truly need. We have no connection to the life that surrounds us and we put no thought into the things we consume and construct. We confuse wants with needs. We don't understand sacrifice or the artful act of living a conscious, balanced existence. And while I have refrained from my usual angry, profane diatribes while attempting to frame these thoughts in coherent sentences, I've no choice but to resort to a ripe profanity now...in short, all we do is fuck shit up.

It used to be a real knee-slapper...there was always the one guy in the bar who just couldn't help himself. He'd tell the most fantastic tales and everyone knew they were just that...tales embellished by whopping lies. But all in good fun, as they say, and his companions at the bar would just turn to one another, wink knowingly, and say, "Yeah...and if you believe that one, I have a piece of swampland in Florida I'd like to sell you."

Except now there isn't very much swampland left to sell, and it isn't very funny anymore.

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