Return From The Abyss

       This week my wife, Anna Tomczak, and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Good friends, Jim and Christa Kelsey, offered us accommodations at their Riverview Hotel & Restaurant on the Intracoastal Waterway in New Smyrna Beach. In addition to the “honeymoon suite”, we enjoyed great food and hours of wandering along nearby Flagler Avenue for shopping.

        We also took the opportunity to drive to the Cape Canaveral National Seashore at the far south end of New Smyrna Beach. Miles and miles of palmettos, sand dunes, and sea oats stretched before us under a cloud-laced blue sky. It was a Zen minimalist meditation seemingly endless with only an occasional egret or gull gliding by.

        The next morning just after sunrise, we rented a two-person kayak at JB’s Fish Camp and paddled out into Mosquito Lagoon to watch wading birds and an occasional dolphin turning near us along acres of waterside scrub. I thought of the “big wilderness” view I sometimes get looking out over the palm tree forests and swamps on Highway 415 just below Osteen near the St. John’s River and even more close at hand, looking over Lake Macy and Lake Colby areas in our Lake Helen. It is a view that will be threatened soon by wetlands building encroachment, subdivision sprawl from nearby cities and highway noise pollution from an expanded I-4.

       This next Tuesday, November 5th — Voting Day - is a chance to elect political leaders who will have the courage to really support growth management - to vote for more funds for parks and refuges that have a “big wilderness” view - to fight unplanned commercial development and highway intrusion into our quality of life we enjoy in West Volusia.

        Read all the campaign literature and consult the local newspapers editorials for their recommendations. See which candidates are supported by the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club and other environmental wildlife support groups. Talk all this over with our friends at the local store and our teachers and our civic groups and our churches this next Sunday.

        Please make your choice to vote on Tuesday for your family, your schools and your community as we need all the help we can get from County and State candidates in protecting our future.

       See you at the precinct voting booth on Tuesday.