Bahia Honda

The summer after I graduated high school my family took a trip to Florida to visit relatives. It was a particularly memorable trip; my aunt had just been diagnosed with cancer, and seemed to be responding well to the chemotherapy. At least, that's what 18-year-old me gathered from what little I heard, and even littler I wanted to ask. We went to SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, walked on the boardwalk on Daytona beach, and eventually all loaded up in the car, complete with my three cousins, for a week or so in the Keys. We listened to the Beach Boy's "Kokomo" nonstop, took the obligatory photo at the "End of the United States" buoy on Key Largo, went deep sea fishing, and wrapped it all up with a day at Bahia Honda State Park. The name, I am told, means "deep bay" in Spanish.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls...

The beach is deep, with a long sandbar that runs parallel to the shore between two large strips of underwater vegetation. It was there that we found the two big queen conch shells. We brought them home across the country, wrapped in towels, frantically checking them at each rest stop. They sit in our house like pearly pink stars, out of place between the scrub oak and sage.

Before this July, I had not been to Florida in two years. A week after my 24th birthday found me huddled on a standby midnight flight to Orlando racing time before the tide rolled out. Because there is only so much time one can spend in a hospice room, and only so much time one can entertain well-meaning strangers, my brother I took one of my cousins to New Smyrna beach for one day of respite. While the two of them fished, I swam out further than I ever should have, and deeper than I'd ever been to watch the little round porpoises roll past us on the current. The next morning she left us to go further up and further in to places I have yet to see.

Two years from that day I sat across a kitchen table, listening to a woman with eyes like a Verreaux's eagle rejoice over her son gradually conquering chemotherapy. I brought them dinner, celebrated with root beer floats, and marveled. The whole night tasted of sea water and phoenix fire, pressed down and running over.

I returned to Bahia Honda looking for something. The beach is still as I remember, and the signs, admonishing people against removing live shells. I could not find any dead ones. The live coral grows on the dead. Barnacles cling to empty shells. Waving grass sprouts from every nook and cranny in the rocks. The ocean eats itself and lives forever.

I dove until my back blistered, and my sinuses burned. I swam out further than I ever should have, and deeper than I'd ever been, but there was nothing this time. Little pearly pink shards glistened in the sand and under my fingers, but the whole, perfect shell eluded me. Nothing happens the same way twice.

I'd like to say that I saw a dolphin, or touched a ray, or found a huge sand dollar, something like that, but there was nothing big or elegant waiting for me. Little shoals of side-striped and spotted fish scattered under my hands, returning to graze in the wake of everything I kicked up. Once I startled a pufferfish and a barracuda, and I frequently turned around to find myself being trailed by flocks of little butterfly fish. It felt like some sort of strange undersea Narnia. I found myself gradually getting distracted by a royal gramma, bright purple and yellow against the drab sand. It was enough.

God, of your goodness give me yourself, for you are sufficient for me.

I drove home through flocks of sleek white ibis, rising out of the Everglades on either side of the road. I crawled through Miami traffic until I made it back to the hotel, and then I laid on my bed all evening, my back an inch deep in aloe and lavender. You win some, you lose some. :) Maybe I'll never find another conch. Maybe I'll find ten tomorrow. But I know I'll see something beautiful as long as I'm watching.