Define Adventure
After visiting Bok Tower and Gardens near Lake Worth, I wrote what I thought was a great piece on Edward Bok. He was an amazing man, an immigrant who became editor of Ladies' Home Journal and subsequently married his publisher's daughter. The coolest thing about him, though, is his contribution to our modern domestic set-up and vocabulary. He mass-published house plans with a more everyday family-friendly lay out than what was otherwise popular at the time. In doing so, he made housing plans available to America's growing suburban middle class, and did what he considered a service to domesticity by doing away with the formal parlor and instituting the “living room” as a room actually used every day by the family. While he did not invent the term “living room,” he certainly propelled it into our American vernacular, and in doing so, he changed the way families thought of, and how they actually used, their own homes. But, alas! as interesting as this man was, my piece about him was not. Turns out, it read like a Wikipedia article, so I nixed that post.
After visiting Flamingo Gardens in Davie, I wrote what I thought was a great piece on the original farm and grove of Floyd L. and Jane Wray. However, when re-reading it prior to publishing, I realized it was crap. Decaying, flies-swarming, stinking-up-the-room crap. Turns out, from the outside looking in, the Wrays aren't really that interesting. In the re-write, I kept only the bare bones on the Wrays, concentrating on the amazing animal and bird sanctuary Flamingo Gardens has become. Birds, reptiles, and animals not suited for the wild are given a safe place to live out their lives. And, what an amazing green space it is, with mature trees and an impressive variety of native and non-native plants. Surely there's a blog there, just waiting to be written, right? Nope, wrong. Still crap. I couldn't pull it off. It read like a Trip Advisor review, so ix-nay on that ost-pay too. Damn.
Now, my time in Florida is limited and it's been too long between blog posts, but I apparently have nothing to say. Surely that can't be right. Since when, and in what universe, do I have nothing to say? How can this be? I've been binge watching “Buried in the Backyard.” Hardly compelling subject matter. Roxie's never-waning joie de vivre resulted in her spraining her wrist. Okay, there's a life lesson there about always being happy and taking the downside of everyday life in stride. But that's not really an adventure, and the words just weren't coming, and, yeah, that would probably be boring to everyone except me. What the hell else could I possibly write about? Hmmmm . . .
Then it hit me. The angry Atlantic. This most beautiful body of water. Not everybody gets to see her, and she'll be out of my reach in just a few short days! I've been so busy looking ahead to our Florida departure and so busy trying to describe these last-hurrah adventures that I've taken this beautiful place for granted. For a few more days, I will still live on Florida's Treasure Coast. It is so named because of the weather and the unique shoreline that caused the unsuspecting and unaware sailors of old to wreck. Sunken treasure is the stuff of legend, and while documented history includes hundreds of cargo ships wrecked just off this shore, only a few adventurous souls (notably Mel and Delores Fisher whose find of the Spanish wreck Atocha in 1985 is still the largest treasure salvage to date) were persistent enough to actually FIND any treasure. Once again, life presented me with some blog-worthy, quality adventure material, and the synapses still wouldn’t snap. Double damn. Triple damn. Exponential damn!
When trying to decide what to do in my last few days here, I included a visit to the angry Atlantic. I sat with a delicious beer in my hand, watching both the incoming tide and a ferocious storm slowly, persistently consume the shoreline. I sat there thinking how it must have been for those sailors who lost their food, transportation, and valuable cargo just offshore. What a grand adventure they must have had crossing the Atlantic, only to lose it all within sight of land. And I thought of those divers and historians still out there, those folks whose search for treasure is an everyday adventure on the grandest of scales. Then, like a lightning bolt into the ocean, it hit me what an adventure I was having! The force of this water, and this wind, in this specific place, flushed out the Jello in my brain. Oh my God, wow. This piece isn't going to be about any specific foray out into the big wide world, or even about the Atlantic Ocean in particular. Instead, it's going to be about our innate ability to elevate the commonplace up to adventure status. I'm suddenly compelled to shout what you already know: our everyday lives are filled with the magnificent, and in our ennui we forget that we are born adventurers.
Ostensibly, we all live in a mental and physical place of our choosing, and whatever the reason for the choice, we live with the everyday awesomeness of what that place has to offer. We live in a world of everyday adventure, a place where this crazy dog stands with her injured paw in the air and a ball in her mouth anyway. We live in a world where boredom is of our own making and adventure is always right in front of us just waiting on us to notice. Adventure is seeing a smile on the face of a friend and seeing a bit of graffiti on street corner. Adventure is hearing waves crash onto the shore and hearing an owl hoot in the woods. Adventure is feeling the pressure drop before a storm rolls in and feeling the lift from a beautifully-performed piece of music. Instead of spinning in circles, writing and re-writing a post on what one might call an adventure, I finally am able to say succinctly what I have always held true. Adventure is defined by the adventurer. My sincere wish is for us all not only to dream of the bucket-list, once-in-a-lifetime adventures, but also to appreciate the everyday commonplace ones we find in our everyday commonplace lives. Let us be everyday adventurers, all.
