You call it paradise, we call it outside.

Some friends and I, a hand picked crew, intend to take to the boats next month and spend 4 or 5 days on Dog Island. I feel blessed to live here in North Florida, where a few nights in paradise is not too much to ask even in the face of unemployment or thieving politicians.

For a fat man who has to wear sunblock to go look at a full moon, I'm at my happiest in or next to my Gulf of Mexico. Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm scared to death of all that's lurking beneath the waves, unseeable especially with my glasses off to swim. But I was raised on the beach, in off season cottages and meandering state park coastlines and bars with walls open to the sea where I ate maraschino cherries in the afternoon while my dad played guitar.

This is what life on the island looks like.

In this case, a half dozen of us - old salts and new fish - will load up the coolers, the jugs of water, the playing cards and toilet paper and bump across the narrow space between land and strip. We'll drive wildly through the loose sand roads to keep from bogging down, and then we'll pile out and proceed to forget what day it is.

Aside from groceries and beer and a pair of clean drawers, my packing list:
- a lifetime of pirate adventure stories
- a broken in bandanna
- a brand new belt knife, in case of whittling or attack
- 50 years of friendship, combined, with my friends
- 1000 blank white cards
- 4 novels, 2 notebooks, and a fat handful of pens

Combined with rum and canned corned beef, that should get us through.

on the dog

Billy's haiku for Dog Island:

Mr. Horseshoe Crab,
You are so prehistoric.
Get away from me.

like a foolish man who built his house on sand

Do you remember that developer who went to Dog Island and was so struck with the near pristine beauty and untouched nature that last year he bought up a bunch of beach front land and gave it to his old university to figure out how to build it up and make a ton of money off of it?

Well, it turns out that they still haven't figured out that the land they intend to build on is dissapearing at the rate of several feet a year. Bless their little hearts. I hope their final grades don't depend on making something work down there.

Don't Build On Sand

Some Atlanta-based developer bought a chunk of land on Dog Island. He's turning it over to an Indiana University so students can figure out how to develop it as a sort of class project.

Look, I've been to Dog Island. I love the place. It's beautiful, it's quiet, and it's isolated. No bridge from the mainland means no big crowds of drunken college kids whooping it up along the beaches. The one thing Dog Island is NOT is stable. Chunks of it wash out to sea all year long. Build your house on the water and eventually the Gulf's going to eat it right up, just a gulp and it's gone.

I don't know what they're teaching in universities these days, but wouldn't "don't build on land that's not going to be there in 10 years" part of the lesson?