Lake Santa Fe in December

The weather is literally freezing when K.J. loads our suitcases in the car, and we drive to Charles de Gaulle airport.  We board the plane with coats and hats and pull them off as quickly as we can when we land in Orlando.  Finagling eight suitcases and four carry-ons out of the airport and to the pick-up curb makes me sweaty.  The humidity and the temperature immediately remind us that we've entered a world of citrus fruit and sunshine.  

Arriving and leaving the U.S. from Florida is a ritual I love.  It's a quiet transition that welcomes us back to America, though not yet back to the state we call home.  When we're leaving it offers us another middle place, not with our immediate family anymore, but not yet out of the country.  

Florida gives us time with extended family it would otherwise be hard to see, and it's a warm welcome to people living in the gray of a northern European winter.  Vitamin D is abundant here, as is the moss hanging from the trees.

The sunrise is stunning and peaceful, but you still feel the chance of something wild.  Something about the landscape makes me imagine what it would have been like to be a Spanish conquistador seeing this land for the first time.  I watch the dark shallows nervously for gators and snakes, even though they don't come around too often anymore.  You can never be too careful.

Thankfully, there are no snakes today, only woodpeckers.