Pilgrim in the Trailer Park

It was a beautiful day to go to Ponce de Leon Springs in Deleon Springs, Florida. It is populated by huge live oaks, their majestic branches lounging on the ground. I took a picture right away. We moseyed on down to the spring; there were a lot of people in the cold water. I came prepared to get in, I just didn’t realize how cold it was. John and I dipped our feet in first. Then he lowered his body in. “It’s not so bad,” he remarked. I didn’t believe him. I was content to submerge my legs and feet. But then I thought, I came all the way here to experience spring water. There was only one way to do it. So I lunged forward into the water, a bit of a shock to him. When I came up I grabbed the ledge for support (you can stand in it. It’s really not that deep) and rested my arms on the hot concrete. “How’s it feel?” he asked. “Cold,” I said. Well, I got in, so now I could get out. I had just enough upper body strength to hoist myself on the ledge. I felt proud; it was worth it.   We at...

  John and I went to the park to feed the turtles. We’ve been doing that a lot lately. Yesterday only four showed up. Today twenty-two showed up. That’s a lot. I was standing on the dock watching the turtle frenzy when a little girl came up to me and handed me a small flower. That is so sweet, I thought. She went to give one to John too, but he wasn’t paying attention. “ John, she wants to give you a flower,” I said. “Oh, thank you,” he replied, as he took the flower and continued showering the water with cat food. That is just the sweetest thing ever , I kept thinking to myself. She doesn’t know us and we don’t know her, but she is just being herself. Leave it to a child’s heart to spread love. To a lot of people it wouldn’t mean anything. She’s just being a kid, they would think. And that’s true. Kids lack the inhibition we adults have.   In the Bible, Jesus says in Matthew 19:14 : “ Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of ...

  Sherman was our black and white tuxedo cat that we kidnapped from the park. Sorry, “catnapped.” Seriously we did. He was this stray (well we think he was stray) that kept showing up and would eat all the food we could give him. He had a clipped ear. I thought he was a girl because he had a cute meow. At first we called him Sweetie. But after we found out he was a boy John named him Sherman, after a Sherman tank (trust me I did not come up with that name). And was he a tank…picking him up was like a sack of potatoes. He was not fat, more like meaty or girthy. Sherman got used to our home and used to go in and out the kitchen window. But he really liked the bed and would lounge on it for hours.          He went missing a couple months ago. It’s so weird ( like i said, mysterious cat traps in the park…hello!) The night he went missing we found mysterious blood in the backyard. Before that he was staying out really late. Then he never came back. After a mont...

Why did I name my blog pilgrim in the trailer park? Well the second part is obvious: I live in a trailer park. Riverside Mobile Home and RV Park, to be exact. But “why pilgrim?” as John asked. Well, in college I read this book called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.  A lot of people in the class couldn’t stand the book. I loved the book; she described nature with a poets heart, she took simile and metaphor to the next degree, she owned the adjective. I can’t remember a lot of it now and I don’t own a copy (but I just might buy one). It is described as “ the story of a dramatic year in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of ‘beauty tangled in a rapture with violence’” ( thriftbooks.com ). So I put a spin on her title and made it my own, although my writing doesn’t compare with hers. It’s an aspiring inspiration.  As I remember, Dillard journaled her way to quit smoking, as she famously survived on chocolate milk and cigarettes ...

 We pulled up to the kiosk and the beach people scanned our license plate to verify that we have a beach pass. We do. We found an open parking spot. We set up our towels by the car (why go out in the sand if you don’t have to? Plus the cooler and radio are conveniently located in the trunk). John pulled out a crossword book. Strain my brain in this heat? Well, the answers must have melted right out of me. I was ready to go in the water. We decided to warm up to the water by playing frisbee first. I gotta say, my aim was better today. But John threw one to the side and as I went to grab it a big wave splashed on me. Oooh! That’s the fun of it. Well, now I was ready to get in the water. It was cooler and clearer than I remember. At first I tried to beat the waves, but after a while I just let them hit me and finally dunked under one (holding my nose like a nerd).  Two other ladies were in the water and asked us have you been out to the sandbar? And why don’t you go out to the sa...

 Life is too good to feel bad. Whenever those bad feelings come up, you say to them, like my Spanish grandmother is her broken accent, “Get-the-hell out of here!” Today I watched the sunrise in pink and peach and flesh colors (I got up at 5:30: amazing). One clump of cloud sported neon pink, the rest were grey. My boy cats joined me (misery does not love company). I heard a meow above my head: Grey was on the roof! “How did you get up there? And can you get down?” Oh yes, he’s fine. The sunset continued to morph into orange, encompassed by a powder blue sky. Streaks of cloud brushed by a haphazard painter. And now the clouds are morphing white. A lot of people are out this morning: runners, bikers, dog walkers, like my neighbor Rodney with his beagle, Sammy. Did they see the sky? Are they aware of progression? Do they see the birds (swallows?) transcendent in flight? Was it an act just for my benefit? It has everything and nothing to do with me. We are made of stardust, after all. ...

 Bushmann Park is really cool. We found a turtle outside the park and wanted to take it to the water, but John had second thoughts, so we left it. We were on our way to feed the other turtles in the water. Well, only five showed up. We named one “T” due to his t-shaped shell pattern (why are turtle boys and not girls? I don’t know). He was absent. They got a heavenly shower of dry cat food. They looked like pac-mans gulping beach bit. Some are big and some are small, with algae on their shells, some more than others.  No luck with the eagles nest. Saw a squirrel. “Do you like cat food?” John asked, and threw him some (meow mix for everybody!). The trail around the water (I honestly don’t know if it’s a lake or a pond. Close call) is half a mile long. We usually do one lap. We run into cute dogs. Like Benji, the scraggly mutt who walks ahead of his owner without a leash. Rarely, a snake (and John will say it’s “beautiful” and I’m like “sure.” Maybe one day I will appreciate the...

 Today I saw a woodpecker and its baby, while standing in the Elks field talking on the phone. The mother and baby exchanged food mouth to mouth. They both had a red tuft of hair in their head. In Bushmann Park we counted eighteen turtles in the water. They gobbled up dry cat food (don’t use wet. It sinks). “Feeding twenty cats, eighteen turtles…and a partridge in a pear tree,” John said. We used to feed a colony of cats several streets behind the Dollar General. “Old Faithful” was one of the regulars. He had a bad eye. We grew attached to an orange kitten. Mostly they got dry food, but often we brought turkey or tuna or salmon or all of the above (one time a guy on a bike rode by and called us “cat assholes”).  My neighbor Jim puts his leftovers on a tree stump for squirrels and raccoons. But the park just issued a notice not to feed stray animals. Don’t they realize we’ve got a multitude of stray cats and anybody is feeding somebody something? Exactly. John used to feed mull...

 The beach was so fun. I wore my light-green bikini; no sunblock (hey, I’m a Floridian). Brought my Marlboro “special select,” of course. Set up my GCI rocking chair. Two Miller Lite beach towels. One Milwaukee radio. Cooler with water, Aspire, and ginger soda, twizzlers and potato stix for the birds (not the twizzlers). We had some friendly bird guests! They crunched the potato stix to an accommodating size, left no crumbs, then flew off.  We played frisbee in the water (my aim is not so good: John has to run a lot to catch mine). Splash, splash, splash. Then we got in the water, which was cold at first, then into waist high water with waves splashing at our shoulders. I almost lost my sunglasses! I like to do the doggy-paddle. “John, do you feel that?” I asked, to discover barely golf ball sized transparent jellyfish. “If this were Australia we’d be high-tailing it out of here…”(obviously the jellyfish are bad there). So we got out. John sat on a towel and I took the ch...

 John and I went to the Daytona Flea and Farmers Market. Same stuff. Trump tshirts (John wanted one). Weed paraphernalia. Stuff I have no use for. Couldn’t find the Avon table, go figure. Need a map to get out of the place, literally. “Do you have coffee?” I asked the snack bar lady. “It’s old.” Can’t even get a cup of coffee. “Oh look, an alligator head”… that’s something we don’t have. Instead, John bought a small robotic plush kitten (“what’ll the cats think?”). We practically went in circles (squares, I mean). I found a KISS sign that Ray would like, but it’s missing three members of the band. John bought a new knife, which he’s sure is giving him a skin rash from the greasy chemicals used to treat the blade. Go figure. I did find a copy of Shoeless Joe by WP Kinsella, the book that made the movie Field of Dreams (we just watched that), and I would’ve bought it but I don’t think I’ll read it. Almost lost John in “Knick knack paradise” (hoarder-ville). Was interested in various ...

 Sugar Mill Gardens is beautiful. There are a wide variety of plants in this park that houses the old sugar mill plantation. A lot of the equipment is still there. Some machinery was run by horsepower (literally). Indian wars were fought there. Despite that, some beautiful and unique flowers were planted, with names like Elliot’s Aster, Bluecurls, Sweet Acacia, and Kalanchoe (I wrote them down in a little book. I’d never remember). It is peaceful to walk the paths and admire the plants. There is a huge Live Oak with sprawling branches dipping to ground level, surrounded by wild pineapples (not edible, by the way).  A few plaques mention the history of the plantation. You can only imagine what it was like to sweat in Florida heat while harvesting and processing sugar cane. The old brick still remains. The trails go into the woods, cool and shaded, where you might spot a red cardinal or a lime tree. Other plants include: Pacific Juniper, Globe Amaranth, Japanese Lantern, and Mai...

 John and I had a big day out in New Smyrna Beach. We paid ten dollars to get into a park with a trail, a circular boardwalk that spit out at the beach in different areas. There was a surfing competition going on. We walked the beach for a while, shoes in hand, and as always I spotted shells (mostly broken). Back on the trail we stopped to read signs about wildlife and plants (did you know out of eight breeds of florida snake only three kinds are venomous?). We walked to the dog beach and saw happy doggos play in the water and sand. And then finally we saw a gopher tortoise! He was munching on plants while he crawled through the brush. And then another tortoise! A baby. More walking. All I could think about was getting a coffee. The trail spit us out at a pavilion with bathrooms and a glass diorama of different seashells, with names like “Baby’s Ear,” “Netted Olive,” “Moon Shell,” “Angel Wing,” and “Jingle Shell.” Very cool. And lo and behold there was a red food truck that clearly...