That Florida Connection

I had arrived. I was back in the steamy woodlands of what I called for many years, my home. Cruising down the blacktop of a two-lane road, it weaved and meandered its way through the backwoods of North Central Florida. We drove deeper and deeper into the forest. The forests where, as we ran wild in the heat of summer, the sweat dripped from our skin as thick and as plentiful as the Spanish moss that oozed from the sprawling branches of the mighty Live Oak trees. Those same
soaring Live Oaks lined the roads and permeated the vast slash pine groves and the swamps of Alachua and Marion counties where we lived. The hot, humid wind that now raced through the open window held not only the aroma of swamp water, mixed with the sweet smell of honeysuckle on the vine, but it also carried within it, memories of times gone by.

I spent almost my entire life connected to these back roads and timberlands. It was the freshwater springs, blackwater rivers, and tannin-laden lakes that we spent our lives exploring. We fished on the lakes and caught crawdads in the clear running creeks. We spent as much time as we could out in the woods: we swam, we drank, we camped, we canoed. We fought and loved and grew from feral children into young, guns a blazin’ adults here in these woods, which now whizzed by me at a furious rate. And now, with each passing mile, the woodlands through which I traveled continued to bring a flood of memories.

As I grew, my connection to the woods of North Central Florida grew with me. It was here amongst the backdrop of the magnolia trees, slash pines, and a vast variety of oak trees, where I raised my kids. It’s where they eventually grew and fought and loved and swam and explored as I did. It was there, in a trailer snuggled into a 10-acre tract of land deep in the wild growth of trees, that was our home, our playground, our teacher, our friend, and our refuge. It was those                                                                  surrounding woodlands where we hunted white-tail deer to

feast upon. It was there that we grew our garden or traded deer meat or fish for a local farmer's fare. It was there where my kids grew to adulthood only to leave the nest to settle in places bigger and less wild; carrying with them the lessons one learns in such a place as this.

As my family grew, so did my career. A land surveyor by trade, once again I found myself connected. Connected to the land in a way that few people get to experience. The land on which we lived, the land that surrounded me was where I spent all my days; traipsing through blackberry thickets, swinging a machete among the gators, snakes, and mosquitoes that grew as big as the giant unwieldy banana spiders that weaved their webs overhead. 

Twenty years it was that I bushwhacked my way through it all. Through the woods, through parenthood, through the loss and the joy of life in the country. And all of it, every moment of my time there in North Central Florida, made me the woman I am today. My love of all things outdoors was nurtured here and, to be honest, I never even knew then how that love would transcend into a love of the rest of the earth that I never dreamed that I would ever get to see. 

And yet, here I am, about to embark upon another grand adventure as far away from those parts as one could ever imagine.There is no doubt that no matter how far I wander from that place that was once my home, I will always carry with me the lessons I learned and the love I garnered for the earth while I grew to adulthood deep in the heart of Florida.

                                                         In loving memory 

John Sherman Flowers