My Life Between the Dimensions

If my time on earth had a portal allowing access to my “happy places” of a full and long life, this certainly would be one of mine.  Cross Key was only perhaps a 30 minute drive south from my home West of Homestead, Florida, and it connected the mainland to Key Largo and access to all the small tracts of land making up the Florida Keys all the way to Key West.  It was a place from which to launch a boat from a primitive ramp into the  backcountry cuts and creeks of Florida Bay and escape into isolation from the crazy stress of a Miami workplace.  It was the ancient home of the Calusa and Tequesta, and it remained as then, still. I usually would go alone, slipping the 17’ Dolphin open fisherman from the trailer two or three hours before sunset, and motor through channels and cuts between small keys until arriving at about 45  minutes from the ramp to the mouth of a creek already teeming with baitfish and shrimp and the accompanying swirls of Jack Crevalle, ...