The guy was loading his car to leave as I was crossing the parking lot carrying luggage up to our room. We both wore the smiles of those who are on vacation and began to chat.
I mentioned the West Virginia sweatshirt he was wearing.
“It is where I grew up. It’s God’s country,” he said. Having been to West Virginia I could not disagree, so I nodded. I have heard the expression “God’s country” many times before, but this time it settled into my mind.
Where, I wondered, is a place that is not God’s country?
I am pretty sure the place we visited, Florida’s Panhandle, would make the list of the Almighty’s select locales. I could feel it as Becky and I hiked Grayton Beach State Park and walked reverently through a cathedral of tall, long-leaf pines with hundreds of saw palmetto clustering low at their feet.
Grayton Beach State Park is just one of several state parks, state forests and beautiful beaches along the Gulf Coast of northern Florida, the Emerald Coast. During this short trip, we did our best to explore as many of them as time would allow.
Our rooms were in a densely developed area of the Panhandle, but it being the offseason, our city was not crowded. Even so, Becky and I spent very little time among the countless condominiums, beach shops and seafood spots. We set our sights and planned our days around the more untamed places.
Grayton Beach State Park was a perfect fit and felt comfortable to us. Well, except for the snakes and bears.
At intervals along the trails were educational signs. Some explained what it was we were looking at — long-leaf pines and saw palmetto — and some explained what it was we should be on the lookout for. This is how we learned that we were sharing these wild spaces with various birds and small animals as well as poisonous snakes and bears. Oh, and we were to watch out for alligators, too.
At one point, we were reading yet another sign about bears when — I swear this is true — a furious rustle began in the bushes just in front of us accompanied by the sound of something stomping the earth. Becky grabbed my arm just as a small deer pounded onto the path and crashed, disappearing into the thick underbrush. I wondered later if she grabbed me thinking the bear would understand we were a couple and leave us be, or perhaps she thought it would be a romantic story if we were found mauled yet still clutching each other.
Anyway, we didn’t encounter bears, snakes or alligators, but we did keep our eyes open.
At a tourist information center a guide gave us a DVD, “Costal Dune Lakes.” It tells the story of committed locals’ and their efforts to preserve the fragile, natural beauty of some of the rarest ecosystems in the world in the face of well-financed and well-connected attempts to turn the land into yet another commercial enterprise. It’s a story of people who fought to keep their piece of heaven natural and, as one person interviewed explained, keep their place “human-sized.”
Florida’s climate and beauty draw people which means they draw people who see opportunities for money to be made. Development can lead to better lives for local people in some sense, but often it is at the cost of the loss of a sense of place as well as the environmental degradation of the very place they call home.
It’s not just in Florida. Here in Indiana we have an ongoing conflict between those who tout the economic benefits of coal for all Hoosiers versus those who worry about the damage to our state’s environment. It’s a battle that is fought again and again in this modern, complex and crowded world. It’s not good versus evil, really. All sides usually think they are promoting what’s best for people. If only we could find some common ground, some way we could all live in a place we called God’s country.
Norman Knight, a retired Clark-Pleasant Middle School teacher, writes this weekly column for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
