Skip to main content

Deep In the Woods

When we moved here, friends said good-bye and wished us well in our new life at the beach. We would be living just a mile from one of the most beautiful beaches in Florida, after all. But in the Panhandle, you’re really living in the woods. Communities are surrounded by acres and acres of woods that have yet to be developed, and by lots of forest preserves that will hopefully remain in a natural state.

Thus, the bears. And thus, coyotes and rumors of mountain lions and lots of snakes and eagles and bugs that bite, hard. Pine trees stretch for miles, and the forest floor is covered in palmettos. These forests are managed by local agencies that conduct controlled burns now and then to prevent wildfires, and mulch for landscaping is generally dried pine needles that come in bales.

A little story about how these forests might not always be benevolent: a few weeks ago, two people stole a car in Tennessee and drove it to the Panhandle. As the result of a police pursuit on the highway, the car crashed into the edge of the woods, and the thieves foolishly climbed out and ran into the woods. Inexplicably, they weren’t wearing shoes. 

Sheriff’s deputies were on hand with bloodhounds who sniffed out the woman involved, and she was quickly arrested. The man, on the other hand, after ditching his weapon, ran deeper into the woods to hide. I assume he didn’t know where he was exactly or what he was getting himself into, but the forest he chose to hide in was soon surrounded by deputies with dogs to wait him out.

Locals made lots of jokes about how he would manage in there with the bears and the snakes and particularly with yellow flies. They’re big flies that bite and leave welts, and they can be a real plague certain times of year.

After five days, the car thief gave up, and bitten up, dehydrated, and malnourished, he walked out of the woods to walk along the highway, basically asking to be rescued. Don’t mess with the forest. It is not your sanctuary.

So, to the question of “what’s it like to live here?” I point out that the beach is beautiful, but here in the Panhandle, it’s really just the hem of a very large forest, so expect all that comes with living in the woods.

#Panhandle #EmeraldCoast #30A

Labels:

Comments

dive said…
Reminds me of the line in American Werewolf in London, "Stick to the roads, boys, stick to the roads … "
They never learn.
Stay safe out there, Robyn.
1:45 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It's good to be a nice person--to say nice things, to do nice things, to write nice things--but I declare an end to the use of the word nice. Nice is what you say when you can't think of any other adjective. Someone shows you a picture of their back yard--that's nice. Someone tells you about their afternoon adventure--that's nice. Or someone describes their childhood in great detail and sometimes with painstaking effort--that's nice. It's a lazy word, and it's non-descriptive. Nice is like mashed potatoes with noodles and chicken gravy all in a big pile on one plate with some canned corn for garnish. Everything is the same color and texture and base substance--starch (this is a favorite Amish dish). Nice is like a partly cloudy day in April when outside feels like inside, and you can't tell a difference between the lighting and the temperature of your living room and the lighting and temperature of your front yard. Nice is a glass of lukewarm water. ...
20 comments
Read more

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...
18 comments
Read more

My Sitemeter is All Bloated and Not Quite Itself

I'm tempted to let it sit on the couch with its feet curled up under a blanket, a hot cup of coffee in hand, a block of cherry almond bark Chocolove within reach, and An Affair to Remember spinning in the DVD player. I'm one of those obsessive bloggers, the kind who checks her sitemeter as often as possible throughout the day, the kind who gauges the quality of her writing by the number of readers who regularly stop by. I've become less interested in the overall number of hits and more interested in the number of repeat hits. The return visitors are the ones I long for. When my sitemeter reads forty at the end of the day, and the majority of those hits are webpals who have conversed, I'm happy. Forty may seem low to many of you, but I've only been at this since August. To me, forty is a jackpot. A few days ago, I sat down at my laptop and discovered a number somewhere in the eighties. Eighties! Yippee! Yeeha ! Hoo-rah ! I've been discovered by the webworld , o...
18 comments
Read more