---

The past few months have lasted years, and, simultaneously, they’ve flown by in a matter of minutes.

Three storms. Thousands of homes lost. Countless businesses closed.

My therapist — who lost his home in the second storm, Helene — has said we’re all dealing with collective trauma from disparate acute traumas (the storms) and the chronic trauma of the aftermath.

The zeitgeist is not ideal right now.

The morning following Helene, I walked through Gulfport and cried. I was not the only one crying; I would later learn that many Gulfportians were randomly crying. How could it be so bad, I wondered, when we never lost power?

Milton was the opposite: Little water, but the wind arrived, toppling a crane in downtown St. Pete, ripping the roof off Tropicana Field, contaminating the water supply, and taking out the power grid in our area as well.

In retrospect, it was not a good time to read The Light Pirate, a dystopian novel about hurricanes and climate change.

It’s been a struggle to find gratitude, but I’d rather struggle with being grateful than succumb to the possibility everything is awful and never getting better.

As we headed to the Keys for the Thanksgiving holiday week, I found myself wondering if I’d be able to enjoy the time in the Keys.

FloridaKeysGiving

Of all the things for which I have Florida-related gratitude, the Florida Keys are at the top. I first visited in college and fell in love; I missed the Keys for most of my twenties because I was young and foolish and married to someone who hated the Keys (more details here), but every year for the past 21 years (except for 2017, because of Hurricane Irma), I’ve visited at least once. The trips have grown more frequent and last longer; next year, we have a month booked at one of my favorite places in Florida: White Gate Court.

The past two years — as well as in 2020 — we’ve celebrated FloridaKeysGiving. While my feelings on the United States’ Thanksgiving holiday are well-documented on last year’s Thanksgiving podcast episode, I do, however, appreciate the sentiment behind the religious holiday, which isn’t unique to the United States:

Gratitude.

We arrived in the Keys Sunday night, and it’s taken me about this long to relax. I need another week, but I don’t get another week, so instead, I’m taking the afternoon to remember what I love about Florida and what about this state makes me grateful to be a Floridian.

Florida Gratitude

I am so grateful the state has people so deeply invested in protecting it. By this I don’t mean our elected officials, but organizations such as the Florida Springs Council and the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

That gratitude transcends the organization to the people who work there, as well as other individuals. James Gaddis, the whistleblowing cartographer who lost his job for leaking the State’s plans to destroy several state parks with not-at-all-needed “improvements”, gets the lion’s share of gratitude. (About that: Lots of people are grateful to him; he started a GoFundMe to raise $10,000 to help recoup his lost income while he found a new job, and in a breathtakingly short amount of time, it raised more than a quarter million dollars.

But people like Brad Bertelli (my Florida Keys Spectacular podcast co-host), Rick Kilby (the Florida Spectacular podcast co-host), Ryan Worthington (of the Florida Madcaps podcast about hiking), and countless others are in the trenches of Florida preservation and conservation every day, too. Well, metaphorical trenches — we don’t have enough elevation here for real trenches of any substance. They Floridasplain: with their writing, their art, and their research.

When we talk about Florida and protecting it, we like to paint the idea of protecting it with broad strokes, but the reality is, the act of protecting Florida’s natural environment isn’t one grand gesture. It’s a million small ones, delicate brush strokes often too small to see with the naked eye.

And so…

…as I sit here, beating myself up for not writing or reading or doing as much of any of what I’d hoped to do this week, I’m grateful that the work of protecting Florida doesn’t fall to a handful of people; it falls to all of us. And that means when some of us have the months we’ve had, others are still in there, working on their part of the canvas.

I showed up for FloridaKeysGiving worn out and ready to relax. We have to leave tomorrow; I have a book signing at the north end of the state Saturday. It  never feels like enough time down here, but I’m a little less worn out.

Earlier this week the owner sent a platter of stone crab claws to our cottage, along with two splits of prosecco. I hadn’t eaten many stones this year, because with all the crap in the water by us because of the storms, I’m not sure I want any local crabs.

But the crabs down here are a different story. Let the waterways and waterlife back home heal; right now, despite threats from overfishing, there’s enough for everyone.

One canvas, many brushes.