Lake Monroe Dialogue
I’ve written before about how redemptive it is to see the normally calm dilation in the St. Johns turn back into a real river again, thanks to the upstream rain storms. It’s choppy and strong, and I like to believe, full of resolve.
En route, I talk to a good friend of mine on my cell, a cardiologist who really gets how it all works, from the cellular level, right on up. Bobby and I usually paddle places, and he takes striking photos of what he sees, both of us connecting with a primal appreciation for the earth.
Bob riffs me with some science that I hang onto, like a skater on the end of a crack-the-whip. Bob thinks I’m smarter than I am because I write books, and he sometimes lapses into intricate explanations of the cellular dynamics of the world. It’s a world in which all living things—say, a tree–is comprised of trillions of tiny quantum-level intelligences. Each cell with its own organic computer. And so that tree—live oak, cypress, sasporilla—recognizes our presence because it’s an intelligent lifeform. Not terribly far from what great nature writers like Allison Hawthorne Deming and Barry Lopez and poet Gary Synder have been saying for a long time, although they explain it in a visceral way.
As I go to leave the lake, I see a neat historic plaque telling of the bandshell that once was on the little man-made peninsula here. I’m fiddling with my camera when a really hefty guy calls out to me: “Sir!, Sir!” I go over to him, because this could mean most anything. He had seen me next to the historic plaque, so he wants me to know that when Hurricane Donna hit Florida, all the fish in the Sanford Zoo—which then was only a couple hundred yards away—were washed into the lake.
I ponder that a bit, and then ask him what sort of fish, and he tells me, well, goldfish, and, you know, all the fish in the zoo, wanting me to understand it was a really important event. I assure him it sure does sound as if were serious, and say goodbye. I wish I could have thought of something more comforting to say to him, but I’m thinking he simply wanted me to know about the storm and what it did. And that alone may have meant something.
- by Bill Belleville
