old florida

There is a road that winds through the marshland in northeastern Florida, through

the still grass between Ormond Beach and Palm Coast. On quiet nights the wind

brings the ocean in, the sweet salt smell and the parabolic rhythm of the tides. The

lights of the occasional houses dance like fairies in the murk, and the whine of the

mosquitoes and the locusts rise to an unworldly pitch.

So much of the Florida coast is choked with hotels and motels, with ramshackle crab

shacks and minigolf gigs, but there are pockets and blips and stretches where time

got lost. All good young denizens of Daytona have sat cross-legged in the Calle Grande

ruins, leaning against the crumbling stone and watching the filthy water, with the ghosts

of the old plantation flickering in the east. On the islands and peninsulas, the paths

disappear and reappear between the reeds and the sand dunes; in the cooler months,

you can walk for hours with no sound but the soft slap of your bare feet, the caw of the

seagulls, the mathematical breaking of the endless waves.