 Wehonews.com’s roving correspondent, Ed Garren. By Ed Garren. |
This air, so rich that plants grow in it without ever touching earth, so laden with life, it flows and dances everywhere. If God has a playground for lush and gentle air, it is Miami. In it's lush tropical heat, laden with warm moist air, life teams and expands.
One hundred years ago, only Julia Tuttle and a handful of blue blood dreamers occupied this half earth, half ocean. Julia came by boat, there was no land route. When Los Angeles had electric lights and a Chinatown, Miami was a collection of fishing families and other eccentrics numbering less than 500.
Even then, Julia predicted, "Someday, this place will be a great city". She put her life savings and her deceased husband's wealth into buying most of the place, and moved lock stock and barrel from Ohio to this lonely outpost. In it's isolation, accessible only by boat, Julia had made her home.
Henry Flagler, developer of the Florida East Coast railway had come as far south as Palm Beach, fifty miles to the north. He dismissed Miami as lonely swamp, no place anyone would want to visit.
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He wasn't far from wrong. Miami has two natural resources, water and air. People live on a thin layer of earth between the two. A shelf of limestone defines the coast. The Silver Ridge, about half a mile wide, is the thin strip of high ground (thirty feet above sea level) that these early pioneers settled upon. If you look closely at a map of south Florida, you will note that at the point where Miami sits, the peninsula is about 50 miles wide. Most of that 50 miles is less than four feet above high tide, so Miami is really an island in the middle of water. Just 50 miles north in Palm Beach, the state is almost 150 miles wide, and filled with subtle, but powerful differences. Farther south where Miami is, water is a much more potent part of the equation. A virtual island in the tropics, Miami is one corner of the Bermuda Triangle.
With the beautiful northern Caribbean at the front door, and the mysterious Everglades at the back door, life here was an adventure. It was a land inhabited by panthers, snakes, alligators, herons and egrets. On this strip of ground Julia Tuttle found her paradise.
One winter, a very hard freeze dipped far down the Florida peninsula. Even Henry Flaglers grand hotel in Palm Beach was covered in frost, it's lovely gardens frozen solid.
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Julia, seizing the moment, hand picked a huge bouquet of flowers from her garden; orange and lemon blossoms, orchids, and wildflowers. She had this huge bouquet, about five feet across, wrapped in moist cheese cloth and sent up the coast to Palm Beach for Flagler at his hotel. The invitation attached asked him to come give Miami a look.
Charmed as much by her gracious persistence as the fresh flowers, he did come to take a look. Work on the railroad south started within a month. With Julia for it's mother, and Henry for it's father, the city of Miami got off to a strong start.
The Magic City appeared instantly where swamp had been, in less than ten years it had grown from 500 to over 50,000. Bahamians came to build the buildings. Later, black and white folks from up the state and Georgia came to work in the hotels. Jamaicans and Haitians brought more of the islands to the city, all making it a place to call home.
The New Yorkers came in the mid century and made Miami a winter playground, but it was never home until after air conditioning was invented.
The Cubans came post-Fidel and transformed Miami into the most thriving city in America. They brought with them salsa, son, cafe con leche, lechon asado, broken dreams, hard work, and lives re-born in the rich tropical air. The gave Miami their heart and soul and created a world-class city, the New Havana, sparkling and shimmering in the waters of Biscayne Bay.
Today, it continues to grow, the favorite place to come and play for people from all over the globe. One hears multiple languages everywhere. Spanish the first language, English a distant second. Fresh concrete is the most frequent fragrance, after the multiple flowers that grow everywhere.
 By Ed Garren. |
The last year I lived in Miami I planted a tree. I was cleaning off the roof of the garage where I was living, and found a small seedling that had taken root in the dead leaves and moisture of a corner of the roof. Finding compassion in my heart, and not willing to toss such a hardy little plant into the trash, I went out to the front lawn of the house I was living in. I paced off a line between the corner of the house and the street, dug a small hole, and planted this little seedling, about a foot tall, into the rich black earth. From time to time, when I return to visit, I always go by the house to see how my little tree is doing. Attached is a photo of it on this trip, 23 years after I had planted it. It now is larger than the house, and is the most majestic Banyan tree on the block.
If you've never been to Miami, go in the summer, in the rich August heat that makes hurricanes, turns the ocean turquoise green, and the sky the most brilliant blue. The sky, ever moving, filled with rich clouds, laden with water, ready to pour rain onto the hot thirsty ground.
Miami remains a thin line between water and air. It is every bit as magic as the day Julia Tuttle sold out of Ohio and moved her life to the mystical outpost of water, land and sky.
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Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. He is originally from the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Ed has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Frontiers news magazine, and other books, including "Out of My Mind,” a pictorial memoir by Kris Nelson. He is currently working on a book about Addiction in America.
Ed Garren can be reached, even in the Red America’s wilds, at