Hurricane Ian hit a familiar place

Hurricane Ian came ashore last week at a familiar spot: Cayo Costa, a barrier island on the Gulf coast of Florida.

Barb and I used to trailer a boat from Montana to Florida every spring. We’d visit my parents who were then living in St. Petersburg, and camp at various places across the state. Mom suggested we try Cayo Costa, a state park accessible only by boat.

She’d read about it in the newspaper, and like she often did, clipped and saved the story for me.

We almost didn’t find it. Launching the boat on Pine Island, we made a wrong turn out of the marina and ended up across the bay. We asked a passing fishing boat for directions, but no one on board had ever heard of Cayo Costa.

Eventually we retraced our route, discovered our mistake, and an hour later tied up at the state park dock.

It was a beautiful place, uninhabited except for the ranger’s lodging. At that time there were still Australian pines lining the beach along the Gulf of Mexico. They disappeared a few years later during Hurricane Charlie.

Except for getting lost, our first trip to the island was uneventful, our second not so much so.

It began raining during the night, and at first light a ranger pulled up to our camp on an ATV to let me know our boat needed “attention.”

He gave me a ride across the island to the dock where the boat sat low in the water, nearly full of rain. I bailed out the boat and then returned to camp where water was pooling on the tent floor.

We quickly packed up and returned to the boat, which by then was again half full of water.

The first moment the rain let up we untied and headed back to Pine Island. A mile out it began to rain again, a real Florida downpour that cut visibility to nearly zero.

Barb, in the bow, shouted directions and we motored through the deluge, reaching the marina in less than an hour.

We stayed in Matlacha that night, our wet gear draped over the boat to dry.

Florida has grown by millions since that trip. It holds little appeal to me anymore. Always a nice-place to-visit-but-I-wouldn’t-want-to-live-there kind of place, much of it is now uninhabitable.

But only for a moment. Memories are short and newcomers are naïve. It is Florida after all.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]