| By: Paul S. Cilwa | Viewed: 4/19/2024 Occurred: 7/1/1963 Posted: 9/8/2022 |
Page Views: 671 | |
| Topics: #CoquinaGables #StAugustineBeach #Hiking | |||
| After moving to Florida from Vermont, I was happy to be able to explore the woods. | |||
South of our little development was nothing but Florida scrub. My sisters and friends and I spent nearly every day each summer, either exploring and playing in the woods, or going to the beach...usually both.
Our housing development had begun and failed in the 1920s. So streets had been laid, but no houses built nor maintenance done, in the previous 30 years. But those ancient roads provided us easy access to the jungle…and adventure!
Beyond F Street was a major mosquito control ditch, into which the smaller ones alongside the road poured. Usually covered with algae, they looked deceptively solid-surfaced.
There was a trail, presumably there to provide access to the trucks that occasionally had to perform maintenance of the ditches. But we used it to explore.
Sometimes we'd pretend we were Earth astronauts exploring an alien world.
And, sometimes, we'd pretend we were aliens exploring Earth, and would report to each other our findings in gibberish that was supposed to be our alien language.
As you can tell from the below sunset photo, we would literally spend the whole day, just wandering and exploring.
And if everyone else was busy, I went on my own.