Scout Moves

When we first set out to live in Florida, we expected wildlife someone from Ohio would assume, the stereotypical animals. There would likely be alligators in the lakes, and there are definitely snakes, and  there are small lizards that turn bright green, and we would encounter large birds like herons and pelicans. But no one told us to look out for black bears. In the Panhandle, you're basically in Alabama, more so in a pine forest than in the tropics. But still, black bears? We bought a house on the edge of a forest buffeted by just one other house, and before we had even moved in, one of our new neighbors mentioned in passing, simply in passing like saying "sometimes the trash collectors comes super early in the morning," which is true, "By the way, we have a bear family in the neighborhood, so..." So? So, what? What does that mean, and how does that affect us, other than requiring we keep our garbage in locked cans?  Our first encounter went like this. One ni...

I grew up near the southern tip of Lake Michigan, and we would occasionally go to the Indiana Dunes Lake Shore to spend time on the beach. That was my introduction to sand, and I can't tell you today what it looks like. Sand, I guess. It's soft, it sticks to your skin, you can build castles with it. Sand. Here, the sand is noticeably different, and one of the first things new visitors say when first setting foot on the beach is "The sand is so white!", followed by, "The sand squeaks!" Both things are true, and here's why. After the last ice age, minerals, specifically quartz, from the Appalachian mountains began washing down rivers and finding their way to the Gulf shore. Waves washed over them and ground the quartz into crystals—if you place the sand under a microscope, you can actually see the crystals, so they say. This sand is just as good for making castles, and it still sticks to your skin, and it has the added advantage of being home to ghost crab...

I am reviving my old blog, which served me well for several years, but then Facebook grabbed the attention of all the adults I knew in what we had come to call Blogville, a collection of bloggers who weren't selling anything, weren't cooking anything, weren't persuading anyone of any point of view. We were just talkers, and we talked to each other in paragraphs. But as I said, Facebook—and then we started talking in snippets, and sentences, and memes. Well, now  I am ready to talk in paragraphs again. My main point today—Scout moved. After 30-something years in Ohio, we moved to Florida, deep in the Panhandle along a county road known as 30A, which follows a beautiful stretch of beach that, turns out, is unique The sand is white and so sugary that it squeaks when you walk on it. That white sand underneath the water captures light from the sun and reflects back as emerald, and it's all enough to make you weep from the beauty.  This place used to be known as the Redneck R...