Dune Grass

We're out of the protected portion of Santa Rosa Island now, stopped at a public services shack next to a public access parking lot on the edge of condo land. I'm impressed there's public access outside the national park territory here, as that's kind of hard to find in Florida. I'm looking west toward the national seashore territory.

 

Thanks to my parents' love of the place, the Florida Gulf Coast beach is the earliest aesthetic I translated to "vacation," and it has a distinct look that's seared into my subconscious, even though I'd forgotten the specifics. It doesn't look quite like the other beaches I've seen in the decades since those childhood trips, and I'd sort of used those later beaches to overwrite what I remember of Florida. But the sand here really is that white. It's sugary and smooth, made of a more pure carbonate kind of coral and bleached sea shell than the silicate mix that makes up beaches on the Atlantic or Pacific coasts or along the Great Lakes. My Mom has always been fixated on Florida, but she never cared for the Atlantic beaches. She saw this bright sugar sand first, and this is the beach she's always wanted to see ever since.

Done