When I checked in on Monday the park ranger – a youngish woman – asked me “Have you ever been here before?”
“Since before you were born,” I told her.
And it’s true.
Jill and I have been married for more than 40 years. Very early in our marriage we began to camp at Anastasia State Park. The first time was on our anniversary. The next was when we camped there for Thanksgiving and spent a long, chilly night crawling in and out of our tiny tent to keep our turkey smoker going.
How old school was camping at Anastasia back then? Well, all of the roads leading to the camp site were dirt.
And tent technology was in its infancy. Our first (tiny) tent had poles that needed to be assembled piece by piece by hand.
They hadn’t figured out yet that you could connect the sections with elastic cords so they would snap together more or less automatically.
Listen, our kids grew up camping at Anastasia. From the time they were toddlers to their high school years. They knew every trail, every dune, every which way to suddenly vanish into the wild, leaving their parents to wonder if we would ever see them again.
I remember one brisk November day when Jill and I sat next to a roaring fire and watched the Florida-FSU game on a small battery powered TV.
Meanwhile, Jenny and Andrew kept darting helter-skelter through the rabbit warren network of footpaths that had evolved behind nearly every camp site.
And for the record, we always favored the Queen Conch loop. Still do.
But I digress.
The point is that I and mine have been camping at Anastasia in all kinds of weather. Pouring rains. Freezing temps. Gale force winds (the nice thing about camping in Anastasia is that the park’s dense tree cover pretty much deflects all but the worst of winds).
And isn’t it amazing – enchanting even – that you can lay in your tent in the dead of night and listen to the Atlantic surf rushing against the shore?
I have been camping at Anastasia from my mid-30s to my, um, mid-70s.
To be sure, things have changed.
They paved the roads. You can now get cell service. And they built an amphitheater next store so the sounds of nature are occasionally drowned out by amplified rock music.
Oh, and where, once upon a time, we had to hide our alcohol from prying park ranger eyes, now you can drink openly at your camp site.
You can even cycle to the little general store on the beach and buy yourself a tropical drink.
But occasional nods to modern day living can’t really change Anastasia. Its essence. Its natural beauty.
One can still wander its maze of trails beneath ancient wind-and-salt-sculpted oaks and imagine that a Spanish conquistador, or perhaps a Tumucuan village, awaits just around the next bend.
Anastasia weaves in and out of my life history like some living thing. It is not simply my favorite place in Florida to camp. It is my favorite camping spot anywhere in the world.
And it is but a short bicycle ride from Anastasia’s hidden thickets into the heart of Florida’s ancient city
Urgent business back home in GNV unfortunately cut my latest sojourn to Anastasia short by two days.
But I know I will always return. Because Anastasia calls me. It is in my blood.
You must experience it. But be warned.
Once it has you, Anastasia’s pull is irresistible. Even seductive. There is magic in those woods, on those trails, along that shoreline.
On that island whose very name, freely translated, means “of the resurrection.”
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