I've put off writing about Cedar Key or posting many pictures from Cedar Key because---I now realize it---I am afraid of saying either too much or too little about this little North Florida nature coast town.
Everyone has a place to which they feel an intense connection. For me, it's Cedar Key. You may never have heard of it. If so, please see the site linked in the previous sentence. I quote:
Cedar Key is a quiet island community nestled among many tiny keys on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Long admired for its natural beauty and abundant supply of seafood, it is a tranquil village, rich with the almost forgotten history of old Florida.
When I take visitors around the island, they either get it or they don't. Don got it; Rumcove got it; Frannie got it; and Nick gets it. It's almost a test for me, whether or not people feel the charm of this little island town. Walking around the main part of the town, you see an authentic remnant of Old Florida in all its chaotic disorder and mysterious beauty. The same scene that looks starkly unattractive in the perpendicular noon light is suffused with mysterious radiance in the early light of dawn or right before the Gulf Cost sunset---an image of which you can see at the top of this page.
This is the Cedar Key waterfront as it looked at one point not too long time ago. It looks different in all my photographs of it, of which I have many. I think Nick may have taken this one, making it circa 2001.
I like the blue and the red against the---in this photo---bronzy/greeny/weathered waterfront buildings.
Cedar Key is a town of seafood restaurants, artists, fishermen (male and female, naturally), and pelicans. It's on the Gulf. In the town, the water is normally a silvery grey-green, not the radiant bluegreen that you see further down the coast. But if you take a boat out to any of the nearby keys---and you can rent one right there in the town---you see the authentic Gulf Coast color. This picture was taken one December afternoon; and I used it as my Christmas card photo. "Florida white Christmas" I called it. In the enlarged version of this photograph, you can see the town in the background.
For me, the town of Cedar Key is irrefutable proof of the existence of God. Furthermore, I'd feel just the same if---God forbid---it suffered the fate of New Orleans or Biloxi.
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