A Journey through Old Florida

By: Erik Rittenberry

Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.

—Tennessee Williams

I live in Florida, and it’s a beautiful place, especially when you get away from the big cities and the Disneyfication of everything. Whenever I’m not working, reading, writing, or procuring poetic material for this site, you’ll probably find me roaming the backcountry of Old Florida—places where time doesn’t move.

I like abandoned places, the decay of a bygone era, swamps and thickets, blooming magnolias, and palm tree sunsets—places on the outskirts that tend to wash away the grime of too much civilization.

A few times a year, I’ll grab my camera, a tent, and a few essentials and go out and explore the untainted landscape of my home state. With little, the spirit is more. To get out there and taste the fruits of the natural world where people are scarce, and beauty is endless. That’s where it’s at for me.

Anyway, today’s post is mostly visual. I wanted to share a few recently captured images during my wanderings. Marc Riboud once reminded us that “taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”

Indeed it is. I hope you enjoy it.

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“I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force--a wild pain and decay--also accompanies everything.”

― David Lynch

“Some people like neat suburbs. I always am attracted to the rundown and the old and the offbeat.”

― William S. Burroughs

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

― Henry Miller

I was born on the wrong side 
of the railroad track
Like Ginsberg, Corso 
and Kerouac. 

— Bob Dylan

I broke with the sun and stars.
I let the world go.
I went far and deep with the knapsack of things I know.
I made the journey, bought the useless, found the indefinite,
And my heart is the same as it was: a sky and a desert.

—Fernando Pessoa

I would rather wake up in the 
middle of nowhere than in 
any city on earth.

-- Steve McQueen

"The need for mystery 
is greater than the need 
for an answer."

~ Ken Kesey

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”

― Robert Frank

“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

― John Lubbock

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

― Mary Oliver

“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.”

― Osho

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

― Rabindranath Tagore

He went to sea
in a thimble of poetry 
without sail or oars 
or anchor. What chance 
do I have, he thought? 
Hundreds of thousands 
of moons have drowned out here 
and there are no gravestones. 

— Jim Harrison

“Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror but my God you’re alive and it’s spectacular.”

~ Joseph Campbell

“I came late to the love of birds. For years I saw them only as a tremor at the edge of vision. They know suffering and joy in simple states not possible for us. Their lives quicken and warm to a pulse our hearts can never reach. They race to oblivion.”

—J.A. Baker

“The path to all great things passes through silence.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees 
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.

- Mary Oliver

"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life."

~ Hermann Hesse

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