Sandra Gail Lambert

Kissimmee Prairie Preserve - as good as any of those writers retreats

I went camping and came home with a decent draft of a new short story and the mushy beginnings of an essay.  Not bad.  The morning seranades by meadowlarks and the wild turkeys that wandered through my campsite helped.  And let's not forget the loggerhead shrikes, the crested caracaras, the woodstorks, the bob whites, the insatiable butterflies, the snipes (yes, they are real), and the mama alligators that kept living their lives all around me.

And many thanks to the staff (paid and volunteer) of Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park who are devoted to the restoration of this ancient landscape. 

Oh, and check out my new wheelchair . 

Writing in the "Real Florida"

A good part of my writing has been done at one or the other of the state parks of Florida, but it's been awhile. So I'm thrilled that this year I've tuned up, cleaned out, and packed my 1992 Ford Econoline Club Wagon that has the back seats ripped out to fit in a platform bed with six inches of foam mattress topped by an egg-crate and that topped with a quilt and five pillows - my writing bower.

The old gal of a van and I are off to Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. Here's a landscape that epitomizes the "Visit the Real Florida" motto of our State Park System.

"We write about what we don't know about what we know." - Grace Paley

Retreat Report - I didn't write as much as I had imagined, but wrote more than I have in a long time.  The memoir did not pull itself into a seamless whole.  It did deepen and have moments of organization.  The next nature essay is not submission ready, but it does have form and direction.  So, except for my put-upon-myself expectations, the week was a success.

Lovely Downtown Deland was a good retreat site.  My suite at The Artisens Inn was beautiful, De la Vega Restaurante y Galeria, where I ate three times, has scrumptious food, and I desserted at three different homemade treat places and visited a bookstore and two museums - all without ever getting in my car.  A friend met me for the trip home and we strolled around the Lake Woodruff NWR (photos included here) and then ate make-your-own (apple slices with cinnamon and blueberry for me) pancakes at the Old Spanish Sugar Mill in DeLeon Springs. 

 

 

Native Plants!

 
Yes, it's my biannual exhortation to stop it with the drug and water-addicted yards.  Gainesvillians - use this next weekend's Native Plant Sale at Morningside Nature Center as an opportunity to buy and learn.  Here's their video.

Gainesville's Own John Moran

Speaking for Florida's Springs from John Moran on Vimeo.

Gainesville Environmental Film and Art Festival - The First Annual!

 
The First Annual Gainesville Environmental Film and Art Festival is from March 19th through the 28th, and there are so many ways to participate.  You can attend any number of the eighteen screenings of twelve different films, bring your loved ones to the day-long street fair of music, booths, and movies, hang out at one of the gallery openings, go on a guided nature outing, volunteer, or donate scads of money. 

A really good option is the All Inclusive Festival Pass - $50 gets you a VIP opening night reception, a ticket to four (update - it's now 12!) different films, reserved front row seating, and the satisfaction of supporting another one of those Gainesville events that makes us glad that we live here.   

Florida's Eden - A Weekend of Painters, Poets, Music, and Culinary Delights

This weekend Florida's Eden is having an OLO! (Orange Lake Overlook) benefit at the Windmill Gallery just south of McIntosh on 441.  Florida's Eden is a fabulous organization whose purpose is to "unite 30 counties of North Florida for the purpose of protecting our natural resources and using our environmental and creative assets to build a sustainable, prosperous economy." And they do an amazing job.

There will be plein air painting, poetry, good food, and it will be the first warm weekend in forever.  Come out and support an organization that makes good things happen. 

Painting credit: "Anne Gilroy Painting" by Melanie Peter    

Writing in the Floridiana Spirit - A Travel and Memoir Writing Workshop

  
During the camping trip to the Everglades, in the middle of one night, while smashing mosquitoes against the ceiling of my van, I thought about my writing life and figured out a couple of things.  I decided to continue with the memoir, that there was something to work with there. And also that I would balance all the "delving into" of the memoir by doing more with my essays about the natural world of Florida. 

I'd almost forgotten these during the dark of night illuminations when the postcard pictured above arrived in my mailbox - a travel and memoir writing workshop put on by the Anhinga Writers' Studio not three miles from my house.  I signed up immediately.  Does anyone want to join me?   

That Other Writing Mind

No cell phone signal (therefore, it turns out, no easy way of knowing what time it is), no computer, not even any postal service, and the sun was down by seven - by the second night at Flamingo, I was in the writers mind that uncovers what the heck that scene is really about, sees connecting strands, and finds the perfect single word. 

I sure hope I took good enough notes because I don't think I can replicate any of it in the light of day.  

 

I am going to the Everglades!

 
I used to go every January.  I've whined about how wrong it is that I never get down there anymore.  No more whining.  My friend Ruby and I are stuffing both our kayaks in the back of my van and going to Flamingo.  We'll be there for the new year.  And yes, I've been upfront with her about the mosquitoes and cold showers.  She is not deterred. Especially once I mentioned the kayak trip on Florida Bay to see the mangroves where roseate spoonbills roost.   

The campsites don't have electricity so my writing goal is to have plenty of pages done on the current project.  I'll print them out for fussing with.  And, I'm thinking, being without computer means I should be in the writing moment more, fill yellow pages with what is around me, and maybe an essay or short story will emerge.     

Alice Tyler Has Died

Twice a year she'd call me (until the leap to e-mail last year).  Would I cashier at the Native Plant Sale?  Of course I would.  I'd have done anything Alice asked of me - I had a little crush. And I wasn't alone. 

Alice was active in our local Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Friends of Nature Parks, and the Native Plant Society.  She was a woman who loved her bluebird boxes.  She made people happy to volunteer alongside her.  I miss her and wish I'd saved the sweet thank you notes she always mailed out after the sales.    

Alice Tyler's "Celebration of Life" memorial service will be at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens on Sunday, November 15 from 2:30-5:30 p.m.    

Everglades National Park

 
Okay, this is a more-than-usual self-serving post.  Every January I used to spend at least 10 days at the Flamingo Campground in Everglades National Park.  For all sorts of reasons, I haven't been in awhile.  I miss it.  I haven't even seen it since Hurricane Wilma blew through. 

Perhaps if I extol its wonders to ya'll then I'll get myself back down there.  Here we go.

First off, oh my god, the sunrises make you forget that there ever was even a single mosquito the night before.  Sometimes, just lounging against the pile of pillows on my van bed, I've seen a Great White Heron and a Reddish Egret poking around at the edge of the Bay.  One thing I always do is figure out the tides so that I can ride them up to Snake Bight on my kayak and float among the Roseate Spoonbills roosting in the mangroves.  Oh, and then there was that year when dead center in the midst of the scores of White Pelicans crowded onto a sand bar, there was one Pink Flamingo.  Do not get me started on the butterflies.  Or the snakes. Or the mysteries of a coastal salt marsh. Or sitting on the marina dock, eating a yogurt, and watching manatees and a crocodile.   

So, see you in January? 

Native Plant Sale This Weekend

Please, stop having these water-sucking, groundwater polluting yards.  Plant native plants.  And if you live in North Central Florida, come to this next weekend's Native Plant Sale at the Morningside Nature Center in Gainesville.  I'll be there to take your money and Grace will load your plants. 

These photos are of plants that grow in my yard and thrive on neglect. 

   

Paynes Prairie as writing aide

La Chua Trail is only five miles from my house.  It's open most days, all day.  Each visit the place is stunning, always in a different way.  Today's trek was midsummer lush and lotus.  And purple spears of pickerel weed.  Immature night herons.  Fluff-necked adolescent gallinules. 

It took a couple of miles before the twisted-up, has-anyone-responded-to-my-queries-yet, I-could-check-my-email-on-the-phone-right-here anxiety unraveled.  But it did.  I felt it.  Right in that place behind my stomach and in front of my spine.  Whew.  

I think I'll leave a few notes around my house to remind me to get out there more often.  Feel free to nag me about it.     

Gwen, Tukufu, Wes, and Elyse - The History Detectives

Tukufu Zuberi from The History Detectives (my favorite television show) has filmed a show from the Living History Farm at (my much beloved and three miles from my home) Morningside Nature Center about old letters that might indicate a family's participation in the post-slavery exodus to Liberia. (writing! hidden history!)

The program airs this Monday, August 17th at 9pm on PBS.  

 

How to revise a novel

 

Wander your kayak around mangrove islets.  Watch for crabs skittering along prop roots.  Surprise a burst of night herons.  Be ignored by an eagle.  Push against a rising afternoon wind to reach home. 

And in the middle of the post-kayak eating of shrimp and crab (caught in the same Gulf waters you just left) you will know what is important and how to begin. 

"My fingers press into clay.  I balance at the edge of my mind.  The excitement rises and wants to spill into bright colors and glare.  It whispers out of my bones and demands that I continue.  It says that I will not fail, that I know enough, everything."

Florida Love

 

What I like best about Decembers in Florida are the signs of spring. 

In my yard, Stokes Aster's first leaves flop over the top of this year's drop of oak leaves, and there are two poppy mallow stems almost hidden under the fall fluff of the garberia.  The blue-eyed grass is showing as tufts of stiff yellow-green.  The branches of the ash magnolia are topped with a pointed swirl of cream that looks like the tip of a watercolor brush.

      

This is my twentieth December in Florida.  Before, when I lived in Atlanta, I used to day dream about living among live oaks and palm trees.  And here I am. 

Native Plant Sale Tomorrow (and tonight)

 

Native Plant Sale - At the Morningside Nature Center, from 8:30 until noon, Saturday, October 4.  (And tonight from 4:30 to 6:30 for members.)

Twice a year I cashier at the sale here in Gainesville. (Making change out of a cash box is a dying art, but I was a retailer pre-fancy cash registers.) Let me tell you, it's a wild place full of rabid gardeners.  The cars leave with plants hanging out the sides, filling windshields from the passenger seat, and tucked in on every floor surface. 

Each time I get handed a pile of twenties and give back a bit of change I see the local economy meshing with the local environment.  These plants won't need fertilizer or pesticides and not much water if they're planted in the right places. And the money goes to nurseries that will now cultivate even more native plants and next spring we'll have another plant sale and more dotted horsemint, firebush, viburnums, anise, woodland sunflowers, and bluecurls will replace all the imported, drug dependent plants.  

Wherever you live, find out about the native plants in your area.   

Cynthia Barnett and Florida's Vanishing Water

Flamingo Campground, the Everglades, over a decade ago - I was perched beside the wooden benches overlooking the Florida Bay and waiting for the evening naturalist program to begin.  A tall ranger strode up through the crowd, tapped the microphone, and said his talk was going to be on Florida's water.  The first slide was a map of mish mashed lines, and I thought "this is going to be boring."  But I already had a nice layer of mosquito repellent applied, so I stayed.  Well.  Even his government-issued, try-not-to-piss-off-too-many-people version was like an espionage novel.  It had intrigue at the highest political levels, evil corporations, unrelenting natural forces, violence , and all sorts of Byzantine machinations.  

Tonight Florida's Eden hosted an event to "Celebrate our Springs, Floridan Aquifer, and the Water Which Defines Us."  They brought together forty artists, a jazz band, good food, and Cynthia Barnett, the author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern US.  I've only just started on it (sinkholes!) and, like that long-ago ranger lecture, it is the opposite of boring.

P.S.  Also, there was a painting of the view looking up from under the spring water to the sky that is exactly a scene I was trying to write earlier today.  Is it plagiarism if I take that image and put it in my character's eyes? 

Book research

 

Sometimes it's searching the web, sometimes it's flicking through microfiche reels, but sometimes this novel's research means returning to its geographic setting - the Silver River.   

My kayak friend and I were launched by 7:30 and had the river to ourselves.  A batch of baby alligators and their mama curled over downed branches, ibis waited on the top of the tallest dead tree for the first sunlight, and in a sandy cove, naked lesbians squealed as they dropped into the cold spring water.  

And I did do research.  I consulted with my kayak friend and the overhanging branches on how to describe the smell of cypress.  I found out exactly how far you have to go into the trees before the mosquitoes gather.  And, finally, I figured out a simile for how the air is on those mornings in the summer when even before dawn the humidity is hardcore. 

Afterwards, there was barbeque.  Yum.