We drove down to Naples, Florida to get out of winter, like hundreds of other retired snowbirds. And what did we find? Fresh evidence of devastation from Hurricane Ian, at least along the coast just north of Naples on up through Fort Meyers. Life just a mile inland seems to have pretty much returned to normal, with upscale shopping and restaurant districts like the Mercato doing a booming business. But if you drive along the beach roads, you can still see mountains of trash piled up from destroyed beachfront houses and restaurants, and gutted houses on stilts leaning precariously in the wind. Entire apartment buildings also remain boarded-up and empty along the beachfront and canal side of Bonita Beach Road, waiting ghostlike for their occupants to return. And yet the signs of rebuilding are plentiful, particularly at the opulent three-story concrete manses that line the ocean side of the road. Which makes me wonder: have we learned anything from Mother Nature? In Florida, if you have the money and plenty of people do, the mantra seems to be: rebuild and hope for the best.
Many beaches also remain closed, at least officially. Our first day in Naples, we went off in search of a dog-friendly beach. Much to our dismay, we learned that none of the beaches in Naples are dog-friendly, and the closest one to us was the Bonita Springs Dog Beach, 12 miles up the road. It too looked closed but a fellow traveler with a dog assured us that the authorities didn’t care if we ventured in. And indeed workers at the site ignored us as we tramped onto the mud trail that led toward the beach. Fortunately, it was low tide so we didn’t have wade through the natural canal (a few days later, that is indeed what we had to do when we came back to the beach at high tide), and a few minutes later we came out onto a lovely crescent of a beach, where our puppy Loki was soon joined by a friendly pack of other dogs. They had a lovely romp dashing through the shallow waters, chasing each other and a few well-worn tennis balls.
And now an advertisement for the durability of Apple I-phones (and more importantly, the essential goodness of human nature). As we pulled out of the dog beach on Sunday, my friend left his I-phone on the back of his truck and didn’t realize his mistake until we were halfway home. We immediately returned to the scene of the crime but he couldn’t find it anywhere. We kept calling the phone to no avail and my friend was about to buy a new phone the next day when he decided to drive up to the beach parking lot one more time. This time, he found the phone’s cracked casing and one of the workers at the dog beach offered to call the phone number one more time. Lo and behold, this time, someone picked up. “Kurt” had found the phone the previous afternoon and taken it back to the RV camp he was staying at in Fort Myers. He had charged it up and happened to hear it ring when the worker called. We arranged to meet Kurt that afternoon back at the dog beach, where he handed over the still-working phone (despite the fact that it had been run over and the back was cracked) and refused to take any money for his good deed. My friend is seriously considering keeping the cracked phone (rather than fork over $700-900 for a new phone) although he is going to have the folks at a nearby Apple store run a diagnostic on it first.
So what’s the take away here? I guess it is that amidst the enormous devastation wrought by increasingly fierce natural disasters, many people rise to the occasion to help others, time and time again.
This blog is also posted on medium.com.
