Sometimes ignorance is truly bliss. Andre did come out of the murky waters Probably holding a huge knot of rope that he successfully cut out of the prop. We slept perfectly well that evening, And it wasn’t until the next day, when he began to see alligators on the shores of Okeechobee lake that Andre began to freak out… It took us several days to calm Andre down, And I have often wondered what those alligators thought when they saw Andre jumping in the water… Perhaps they thought “this is way too good to be true, it’s got to be a trap”… Or perhaps: “I am not messing with anything crazy enough to jump into the water at night with a bunch of alligators…” Or perhaps the alligators were just sleeping, But one thing I know, we finally reached the other side of The Okeechobee where we entered the gulf of Mexico. The waters were a turquoise blue and we were greeted by Dolphins Who played in our wake for many miles.
“Hey, are you the Lisa that’s married to Peter?”, came a question on Lisa’s Facebook. It was an old friend of ours from when we had met at summer camp. We hadn’t heard from Juan for over 30 years. He just so happened to live in Tampa Florida which was our next scheduled stop.
“The trees have beautiful colors and I hear the wind as it blow through the leaves. Birds sing and I can hear every song, the smells, the sounds… life is so real and so beautiful such a wonderful gift from God”… Juan described life after having gone through major heart surgery. We didn’t spend any more time than a pleasant dinner date allows but I was reminded of something I’ve always known but often forget: Life has countless treasures hidden in plain view, But unless you stop for a moment, the treasures are impossible to find.
We made our way up the Gulf coast of Florida and eventually reached the first goal of our journey.
“Y’all be sure to bring her wide round that first marker; waters round here are pretty shallow. Welcome to Steinhatchee, Rabbi…”, Came a sweet familiar voice over the radio.
To be continued