The Silver Lining

The Silver Lining

Make that the postcard from paradise.

The increasingly worrisome news about the economy and gas prices has a silver lining for those of us fortunate to call this slice of the map home.

Maybe the price at the pump is a constraint on vacation thoughts this year, maybe the summer months seem a bit different without travel plans in mind due to the thought of $100 fill-ups along the way.

The price of air travel is to the point where airlines may start charging for the flotation device that is your seat cushion.

On the bright side - those of us who live in this poster for Old Florida don't have to travel far.

Not much travel needed to visit several of the finest state parks in the Southeast, including what an expert self-proclaimed as Dr. Beach once called the No. 1 beach in the world.

Folks here don't have to travel far to romp in the waters of one of Florida's aquatic preserves - of which there are less than 50 - or explore a bay and ecosystem that is one of the most well-known in the country for the tasty tidbits for which it is home.

Folks living here don't have to go far to tramp through lands largely untouched for decades or even centuries, places that still reveal archaeological and biological fingerprints of the land and its people before we arrived.

Hiking trails, biking trails, boating or kayaking or any kind of water sports imaginable, they are around the corner.

There are museums to get out of the heat for a spell that tell of a rich local history, of the men and women who blazed trails, fought epidemic, invented the ice machine, created a state Constitution, tamed a seemingly untamable environment.

There are good public libraries, plenty of parks with a shade tree and a picnic table to set up for the afternoon, and more boat ramps to shove off from than Britney Spears meltdowns..

And all of this can be had, visited, enjoyed, in one of the last true stretches of what was once the rule and is now the exception in Florida. One of the last generally unspoiled slices of beach and water and nirvana left in this Sunshine State.

The kind of place that people are willing to spend what is required, gas pump and airlines be darned, to visit, to soak in, to lounge in for a few days, a week or two.

So to completely smash the catch-phrase from a Golden Oldie, think twice before bemoaning the latest spike in gas or the state of the summer vacation.

That is losing sight of the reality that 365 days a year, or 366 every four years, represents another day of living in paradise.