Running for Your Life: Rambling Runs in Key West

Key West is a state of mind. A place to bring work and books, that then sit on wicker furniture, untouched. Best to set minimal goals. Like referring to the foliage as fronds, not leaves. Or considering the wisdom of an afternoon rest under a palm tree with ripe-looking coconuts thirty feet above you.

Running in Key West is especially satisfying. For me, who normally trains in flat land-challenged Park Slope, Brooklyn, it’s a dream, either along the sidewalks facing Higgs and Smathers beaches, or up and out on Flagler Avenue, where on a recent visit I saw a spoonbill rooting for grubs, and admired, in the parking lot of Key West High School, a massive conch sculpture made of welded metal that was then painted, one part, lustrous pink, revealing inner space that literally cries out to be pressed to the ear.

Listen to the sea.

Off Flagler, just north of Fifth Avenue, a local told me to take Seventh Avenue and run along the salt marsh park road. The entrance is at Government Road and Flagler. Down this road only the most adventurous tourist comes. The company and sights instead: cove-hugging cormorants, turkey buzzards, egrets, dog walkers, an Air Cubana twin-prop relic that an aviation enthusiast may just be rehabbing, a sad-looking paint ball field, and perhaps most surprising, sign storage for Fantasy Fest (Don’t ask.)

Last year, M and I were in Key West and I wrote this post:

Back from Key West, the Conch Republic, where the captains who run the sunset sails thrill their predominantly Boomer clientele with the knee-slapper, “Welcome to North Cuba!”, upon return in the darkness because for most of us land lubbers it’s more than a little disorienting out there, for an hour out of the sandbank and mangrove low-water keys, the Gulf Stream visible the night we see the sun sink into the horizon and the captain blows the conch so that his face glows purple in contrast to the blood-orange of the sunset, all aboard the AppleBone, as poet Billy Collins dubbed it, because it was a literary cruise, not like the Disney one, a floating theme park that moors near our oceanfront balcony, ESPN Sports Center on a giant screen topside blaring into the otherwise romantic night; shallow draught Caribbean port bruisers these beasts; how they get into the slips, water deep as elderly knickers is anybody’s guess, and a frightening thought that the town fathers have been considering allowing 10,000-passenger monsters into port (although the Italian cruise disaster may put an end to that . . .), which if that doesn’t kill whatever charm north-to-central Duval Street has left then I’m a monkey’s uncle, not to mention the dubious safety of the cruiseships themselves, don’t begin to think that the capsizing of the Costa Concordia is an anomaly, the physics of these boats leaving no margin for error, turn away if you see the chalkboard math on the probability of it happening again, and especially in a place like Key West, where admittedly you do have to ask the question, “How many people can drown in two feet of water?”

I didn’t see Gene Hackman when I was in Key West. Or hear about the car accident he was in. But we did see Ricky Williams and marine life:

• Ricky “The Green Mile” Williams is lifting M in the air, her left foot is eighteen inches off the ground, legs helicoptering. Ricky, now playing with the Joe Tenuto Chicago-style blues band. Drummer we heard has been in bands since he was six, but no longer practices between gigs. Ricky does. Ricky, the blind keyboardist, never stops playing .¤.¤.

• With M, watching the minnows and barracuda, pinhead pursuers and slowly, as if the late scene entrance of the graybeard theater veteran, a ray swims with a nonchalance we’ve been waiting for. We stay for a beat then hop abroard our $40-per-week bikes and leave the water’s edge, Martello Tower Museum, just east of the Key West International Airport.

Next: Running for Your Life: The Next Big Run!