While I’ve breezed through this salty strip of land many times in the past decade, searching for places to hike, eat, and sleep, this is the first time I’ve sat staring out at the sea and Sanibel since I was a kid. We came to the beach and played on the shore, delighted at the sandbars that emerged at low tide and the ripples left behind by the waves, the treasures washed up by evening storms. Memories flooded back as I walked the beach to Bowditch Point, light waning as the sun slipped behind Sanibel, playing across the rippled sand as sandpipers and stilts raced along the glimmering waves. Not just of decades ago on this very beach, but of sunsets shared with Sally on the Arabian Sea, hues of orange and pink against the blue sky and blue water, framed by silhouttes of coconut palms.  It was a night for memories.

Reaching the tip of Boca Grande, I stood and stared at the churning waters of Charlotte Harbor. Purple and blue gathered in angry skeins, the waves billowed in the space between this spit of sand and Cayo Costa. Tiny lagoons formed from the harbor’s overflow across the beach, leaving strips of sand and shells to buffer the shoreline.

Rounding the corner, I walked into the wind. At the base of the sea oats lay beds of shells strewn by the storms, slivers of texture amid the sand. Stooping, I saw the iridescent glimmer of pen shells, and a wave of memory washed over me. I was seven again, combing the beach behind the Anchor Inn on Sanibel Island, where pen shells lay scattered thickly like leaves on the shore. It made me wonder where they’d disappeared all these years.

Feeling the fervor of shelling, a pursuit that slipped away from me years ago, I examined the shell beds more closely. There were murex and conch shells, whelks and tulips. More names bubbled up from the past: jingle shell, turkey-wing, olive shell, jack knife clam. In just a few feet of searching, I found dozens of uncommon gifts from the sea, a bounty of shells unparalleled since my childhood. I looked to the distant horizon, feeling the connection with my young self, my travels past, and a sea that shares its bounty in the stormiest weather.

Wall cloud spun off from Ike

Even though Hurricane Ike isn’t headed for Florida, it’s affecting our weather here in Southwest Florida and scratched my hiking plans for this morning, thanks to the tornado warning that came bundled with this wall cloud in Punta Gorda.

Spending the day on travel research instead, with hopes for a break in the weather later today.

I’m just back from being offline for a week and discovered an email in my inbox pointing me to an editorial this Sunday in the Orlando Sentinel that complains of “federal rules running amok” protecting the Juniper Prairie Wilderness because Tropical Storm Fay dropped some blowdowns in the run and oh dear, we can’t use chainsaws to clear them.

Boy, does this have me steamed. The whole point of the Wilderness Act is to set aside wild places in America where we don’t have to listen to the drone of cars, the rumble of air conditioning units, and the roar of chainsaws. I’ve seen video of well-trained sawyers with crosscut saws taking out the blowdowns in Juniper Run in less time - and for less money - than someone with a chainsaw would take. You can work with a crosscut saw underwater as need be. A crosscut saw doesn’t spill oil and belch fumes.

It troubles me that a major newspaper’s editorial board thinks that the Wilderness Act is a “nonsenscial rule.” These folks need to do a little research before they make such an obnoxious statement. Especially in a state where our designated Wilderness Areas are few and far between.