Better Lucky ...

I pulled up to the world’s most complexly named park, the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve, with one thing in mind yesterday morning.

A peaceful hike.

Okay, two things.

Maybe I’d thrown on an audiobook, and most importantly not see another soul around for an hour or so. I stepped lightly down the sandy track of the orange trail, a favorite, with its sweeping Saharan expanse that felt more Congo than Vilano.

Unlike most of life, yesterday I was in no rush.

A little dose of serenity before the hecticness of the holiday season officially kicked off with Thanksgiving dinner.

The rest of the day would bring the craziness of three kids under the age of six, overdoses of whatever they put in the magenta gem known as Ocean Spray cranberry sauce that made it so addictive, and the gut-busting complex carbohydrate that is my mother-in-law’s sweet potato casserole. Once a year I tackled the dish either at Turkey Day or Christmas, and while I would love to say that I have the discipline to take a couple bites or to wave it off, I would be lying.

Boldfaced.

Annual luxuries, though, are things to be savored … the same way a cat looks forward to an automatic feeder. They demanded enjoyment, regardless of little inconveniences like cholesterol levels or fat content.

In fact, I had no intention of writing at all, a day to replenish the well so to speak. As one foot meandered slowly in front of the next, though, and my eyes scanned the trees around me, an idea struck. So I challenged myself to put together a short piece about it before the end of the day.

And failed.

I blame the aforementioned sweet potatoes, and probably my nephew, niece, and daughter some as well, but there I found myself in the thicket of palm trees, dying branches, and bright yellow, waxy, oblong-shaped leaves that lay clustered on the ground at the base of the tree. A cardinal, red enough for a speeding ticket, with a bright orange beak, plucked at the remaining green on the tree, and in the tree above him, a woodpecker smacked his beak into the bark, and I cringed at the thought of what his brain felt like after such an activity. If I ever thought I had things rough, I could think of the wily old woodpecker and be filled with gratitude that I wasn’t sentenced to spend my time here on Earth slamming my head into a log.

When I reached the shoreline, soft, mucky sand imprinted my shoe with each step, the water lapping at the shoreline, threatening to soak my socks with one ill-timed step. It was funny, because in five years of coming here, I had never had the opportunity to walk the entire stretch at low tide, and I loved the idea that there were still things to discover about a place you thought you knew everything about. An entire driftwood beach hiding in plain sight, and I took full advantage of the experience by climbing over and under thick gray trunks.

Across the bay, the water stirred gently when a chilly whisper blew out of the north. A sailboat motored along the water’s edge, searching for open water, and the three people on board constituted the only voices I shared the scene with. I sat on a gray log that stretched at least fifty feet across the sand and watched the boat until it rounded the point and all that was left was its mast over the trees. It reminded me why I wanted to start sailing in the first place and why I wanted to get good at it quick, fast, and in a hurry.

On the walk back down the trail, I was taken aback when a small armada of wild turkeys stalked past on the ground, seemingly oblivious to both the holiday and my presence. If they knew what it was, I likely could only be construed as the equivalent of Hannibal Lecter to them, and they would be damn crazy to have allowed themselves to get so close to me.

“You fellas know what day it is?” I shouted out to them, as they scattered at the sound of my voice.

The luck of the draw.

Born here, not there.

“A near miss”, “too close for comfort,” words we all shared, regardless of the scientific name of our species. These turkeys were free to roam, wholly unaware that an entire country around them stopped what it was doing, turned off the economic machine in favor of a day dedicated to their … brethren.

Better lucky than good.

EO