Marsh. Swamp. Wetlands. Wildlife refuge.
The road is low, flat, and straight. What roads in the desert and roads through the marsh have in common is that engineers saw no need to follow any contours of the land. You see either your destination, the horizon, or the next turn ahead as far as your eyes will focus.
As I get closer to the Gulf, I swear I can hear rust forming on this (well-maintained) steel frame. Even the humidity has a saline taste. The air is thick like a mid-aughts poem that can’t help but use the word gauzy. Like riding through cotton. Tougher to breathe than through an N95.
Come around a bend, and there is the lighthouse, straight ahead. Another mile and a half to go.
A working lighthouse. Tall, white. Black fountain pen top. White flange base, twice as wide at the bottom as at the top. The lighthouse looks out over the Apalachee Bay and then the Gulf of Mexico.
I stop in the shade of the fountain pen. Sweat stings my eyes, blurs my contacts. Shifts the toric weight. The only relief from the humidity is to keep moving, and to keep moving is exhausting. No breeze, full sun. Hard to believe the heat index is only in the 90s. Not the 107º from the day before, when my lungs felt turned inside out.
I read about submerged rivers, while dragonflies do their helicopter thing. I turn around and retrace my route. It’s either that or switch to a boat.
Alligators’ nostrils poke up through the algae and white waterlilies. Lili pads: deadly. The bright white nested star-shaped flowers attract aesthetes to the gators, who tend their roots.
Strava segment – stony bayou sprint