beyond the horizon

 

Our futures are waiting for us, just beyond the horizon.

laridae & phalacrocoracidae

white street pier

Every so often I enjoy and hour or two sitting out on the end of the almost 1/4 mile long fishing pier off the Atlantic end of White Street with a sketchbook and con leché to watch
the sunrise


Out among the few joggers, bicycle riders, dog walkers, homeless folks, fishermen and seagulls, it's calm and quiet, the air is cooler than it is inland and the new day's sea breeze carries fresher air.


Well, on one such a morning I got to pondering the pier's backstory. (the why and when of it, you know?)
So when I got back home I climbed on-line to try to find the answers. To my chagrin, there wasn't a whole lot of anything about it. So the next day I got myself over to the library on Fleming Street to ask Key West's history guru,
Tom Hambright, about it.


What I learned was that back in the mid to late 1950's Monroe County had a little surplus money laying around and decided to spend it on infrastructure projects.
What they came up with was construction of a series of "roads to nowhere" like Loop Road and County Road 939 up on Sugarloaf Key.
In 1956, when some of that surplus money was allotted to Key West, the voters decided they wanted a fishing pier and the "unfinished highway to Havana" (another road to nowhere) was proposed and finally built in 1960.


These days the White Street pier is something of a tourist draw, every once in a while there'll be a fishing tournament out there or it'll be part of the course for one of
BW Promotion's official 5K runs and on special occasions (the 4th of July or New Year's Eve) the city uses it for fireworks displays.

out on the water over the weekend

smathers beach

Have you ever visited the northernmost tip of Long Island or the southernmost tip of New Jersey late in the Fall?

Off the long beach fronts, the skies are wide and mostly cloudy and the Atlantic reflects the gray, adding it's own tinge of seaweed green.
The air is clean and crisp with the smell of the ocean. The gusting offshore breeze carries the damp spray and the temperature is somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees.

There are so few people around that, with a little imagination, you could swear you had either beach to yourself.

I enjoyed a nostalgic taste of all that yesterday on Smathers Beach.

I'd grabbed a cab out to East Martello to drop of my annual offering for this year's Anne McKee Art Auction. I guess it was just past 11 in the morning and with the "cold", a little more quiet than usual for a Sunday morning.

My original plan was to drop off the artwork and hang around the fort to shoot the long morning shadow effects behind the walls and sculptures. Obviously, that wasn't gonna fly so I did my thing at the museum, waved past the docent on my way out and he waved back wishing me a "great day".

Crossing back over South Roosevelt, to the ocean side, I was about to call cab to cruise me back home again but stopped for a minute to look out over the Atlantic. "Hmmm. . .", I thought, "Let me get a quick picture of this first. . ."

Well, one shot lead to another and then another and I was wearing my walking shoes anyway so, forget the cab and let the games begin.
(once the bug bites, I can't say no. Hell, I don't want to say no. It's what I do. . .)

It was Orient Point and Cape May in Key West!

Off the long beach front, the sky was wide and mostly cloudy and the Atlantic reflected the gray, adding it's own tinge of seaweed green.
The air was clean and crisp with the smell of the ocean. The gusting offshore breeze carried the damp spray and the temperature was somewhere between 45 and 50 degrees.

There were so few people around that, with a little imagination, I was sure I had the beach to myself.

The thing about creating artwork is getting captured by the muse and mentally moved to an alternate reality where the creative process becomes a meditation. If I'm working on an illustration or a painting, the meditation lasts, uninterrupted, for hours or days until the work is finished.

The cool thing about photography is that each act of taking each picture becomes it's own, very short but no less intense, meditation. Study the scene, become the scene and the mind of the camera, release the shutter. For those few brief seconds, subject, intention and mind become one and nothing else exists.

That's the "druggie's high" for me when I'm creating anything. Losing, completely, any sense of self and becoming the creation.

Anyway, 4 hours and 235 pictures later (you've gotta love digital photography), I was back home and happy as a clam who'd escaped the Sunny Sea Seafoo0d cannery.

So, the docent's wish came true and I had a really great day. Seems like a "win win" all around.

brand new day

Sitting out here on the White Street Pier most mornings with a con leche and a sketchbook, I watch the brand new day rise out of the Atlantic.
I may use the time to talk things over with the Creator or reflect on the pleasures of the night before or just consider what needs doing in the day ahead. Whatever it is, it's always with gratitude for another opportunity.
Every new day is another opportunity. . .
To learn something new - or not, to be productive - or not, to make someone smile - or not.
Whatever happens by the end of the day is never really as important as the feelings of wonder, enthusiasm and gratitude for the opportunity to try again.
Every morning, for just a little while, the day is mine and the opportunities are endless.