Call it Paradise

There’s a certain quality to the light of a late afternoon in Florida during the cooler season. In the summer the late day sun blazes, and the air becomes still and searing. Late afternoons from around October through March as pleasing to behold. The land is golden and beautiful and it’s a beautiful day to be alive.

There is a part of Florida that many do not get to experience. Winter visitors’ flock to beaches, to Disney World; Key West; Busch Gardens. So many parts of Florida are overpopulated; too many people converging and living in so small an area. Roads are overcrowded with inadequate lanes to hold the traffic safely, even with continual construction. Housing developments spring up everywhere; land developers run rampant building quickly, without quality, taking exorbitant fees with them to the next project waiting for them to victimize the land. We are left with half-finished developments, or worse, over populated sections; strip malls and parking lots appearing where cattle and wild life used to run.

When I see wide open spaces of land I see the life that lives there. Within just the last 100 years someone fenced the land, raised cattle or crops; before that no one could really live in Florida – it was a rough, hard life. For now, Sand Hill cranes continue to raise their young on this land as they have for millennia. Gopher turtles, possum, deer, wild boar, raccoons, coyote, armadillo, foxes, rabbits; Florida panther, countless species of birds have lived and flourished until the human population began booming; clearing land, raising house after house. The animals that remain are boxed into small areas and have become a nuisance to people. They are trapped and re-located again, or worse, they are destroyed. When developers see that same land they see dollar signs, and lots of them, because Florida land is tremendously lucrative. Florida is the sunshine state, and in 2012 the census discovered that on the average, 630 people move here each day, which is the equivalent of 229,000 people a year.

I live in Central Florida on 2 ¼ acres of land purchased by my father-in-law back in 1962 from a woman who was the original owner of the land. Behind me are 300 acres of prairie that have never been developed. Each day is a blessing to wake up, look out over the field and see what nature has brought to the new day. I am fortunate. It’s beautiful and wild, but its existence is precarious. Neighbors anxious to continue living a semi-rural life grouped together, and we fought land development of the prairie and won on a fluke. It is an uneasy fact that the county owns the property now and it is protected. But it’s really only protected until someone finds a way around the laws, which has been the case in so many areas in Florida. Greed wins out more often than not, sadly. There are signs around us that our pristine prairie is being disturbed and will ultimately fall victim. For now, it is beautiful and peaceful. 

Today I took a rural route home from shopping in a city east of here. It’s a beautiful route, more houses now than used to be, but still, it’s quite a few miles of gorgeous, flat land, perfect for raising cattle and horses. Miles of beautiful land, scattered with graceful old oaks dripping with Spanish moss. I had to stop on the drive to let a young Sand Hill crane cross the road, but I did so happily. Along the way I saw hawks soaring overhead; osprey sitting in their own nests on the telephone and electric poles. I passed at least six other pairs of Sand Hill cranes; this is their nesting time. Young calves, recently born, wandered the pastures with their mothers and other members of their herd. There’s a certain quality to the light of a late afternoon in Florida during the cooler season. In the summer the late day sun blazes, and the air becomes still and searing. Late afternoons from around October through March as pleasing to behold. Today it was beautiful, rural, and breathtaking. Golden light touched the ground, shimmered in the trees, not a cloud marred the brilliant blue sky. I felt so blessed to know that I have experienced such beauty, and in the next breath I knew that such beauty cannot last. The terrible truth is that on 1000 of those glorious, gorgeous, historic acres I passed today, 2460 homes are going to be built, and soon. Along with the homes, according to the Tampa Tribune, the Canadian developers are proud to also add to the plan 345,000 square feet of commercial space and 50,000 square feet of office space. On a gorgeous, sleepy north eastern part of Hillsborough County that has been home to nothing but wildlife. It is tragic.The Canadian developers will build, and they will take their money back to Canada. The city of Plant City will gain revenue from the new homes and the new businesses, and 2460 families will move in. And a beautiful piece of land will be gone, forever. It saddens me. In the grand scheme of history there is nothing that can be done; some people say it is progress and we need to keep with the times. Dr. Seuss says “some say I’m old fashioned and live in the past; I think that progress progresses too fast”. Here is the scariest thing. 2460 new homes; that is only enough homes to fill about eight days of new people moving to Florida. Don Henley says “they call it paradise; I don’t know why. You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye”. I do not see dollar signs when I see beautiful, wide-open spaces. I see breathing room, nature, life.