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.
