East of here.

East of here, there are places that one can immerse themselves in and find a peace, or a calm that is elusive these days. There are places that are timeless as the sands and trees that make those places what they are. Near a little village called Grayton Beach, Florida's government wisely preserved a bit of Florida that was here before native Americans ever set foot on the soil, tens of thousands of years ago. The ancient inland dune areas where long leaf and slash pines grow were great hills snug to the sea before Spaniards like Don Tristan De Luna y Arellano first set foot on Santa Rosa island and attempted to settle Ochuse or Penzacola. A roll call of explorers followed De Luna, whose settlement was carried away along with some of his ships and people with a hurricane.

 The land lay quiet in the sleepy arms of great oaks, and yellow pines whose girths would rival young sequoias. The Chatots fished the Chipola and lived along the bluffs of the Apalachicola. The Penzacola stood on the hills overlooking Pensacola bay and perhaps wondered and puzzled over the strange boats with great white billows as they entered the pass into the bay. They would soon find out how the Spanish would view their world. 

 Over the next three centuries, the red bluffs of Pensacola lay quiet, the bays rich with oysters supplied food for natives, and later settlers along the eastern shore of Escambia Bay. Beautiful lilies and acres on acres of pitcher plants emerged near streams and floodplains. Great black swarms of mullet broke the surface reflecting sliver from beneath their fins. 

Here, dunes rise and fall, covered in sand live oak. To see a dune green with sand live oak, a rolling canopy of dwarf  trees is amazing. Beneath the oaks, they form just as oaks do.  Above,  dead twigs point to the sky, tortured and killed by the salt spray. In between the swales, where the sand holds, yellow tops and Indian Blanket anchor in the quartz sand, millions on millions of grains, swept there by ancient rivers, eons ago. 

Amazing as the dunes are the lakes found among these dunes are the rarest of rare natural gems. Dune lakes lie behind dunes, where sunken areas filled with fresh water and with salt water infiltration during storms, or because of proximity to the gulf. They are priceless, so unusual that they are only found in a few other places in the world. Topping a dune after a trek between swales and seeing a dune lake is mystical.  With a little luck, a great blue heron may be standing near the shore, patiently waiting for a minnow to come too close.

It is a place that has only been found in the last twenty years or so. A place where a road snakes and ambles over old growth dunes, between lakes and pine forests. It is a place that may not be the Florida that most people think of. It is the Florida I know.