Winter Fest
It’s not like me to go anywhere without a camera or my drone. Here we are then. A quick trip around the beach, with the a sandy snow pile covered in children from 4 pm until way past their bed time at Islamorada’s Winter Fest 2018.
Photographs & Film Winter Fest 2018 Gallery
Photographic App Winter Fest 2018 Gallery App
We are a community loaded with hurricane survivors. For some reason when I took the featured image at the top of this page something really sunk in. We aren’t quitters. We are so tenacious. We are determined. We are strugglers.
I’m constantly amazed at the team we are. We bicker. We squabble. But we are an amazing community the members of which help one another when in need. Bar none.
Thanks for being so amazing. I loved the beer, (iou $7) the lobster mac n cheese and the dog parade, the dance recital, but mostly I loved the smiles, the hello’s the warm touches of greeting on the many dear faces not seen since before Irma. For me it was a serious settling back in, a true coming home. Almost like I hadn’t really let hurricanes go until that beach at Winter Fest.
And taking the pictures of so many dear friends, whose kids grew up with my kids, just was the most abundant feeling on earth. It’s a very loving gesture, giving people their best moment on camera. So. That’s my why.
For me, being with my children was the most seasonally joyful moment. They were all there. And I felt safe about their well being. I really did. I knew so many people, and they all knew my kids, I just couldn’t imagine anyone getting lost or being in danger in that crowd. Now maybe i’m a fool. But my kids know the park, we grew up there, we play tennis, lacrosse, run, swim and perform there, it really was a big happy family.
No matter what happens in the next hurricane seasons, working together to rebuild our little communities here has brought us strength. I dare you to say otherwise. It simply is a lovely thing to know how we have all gotten stronger. Some of us have left. Others have stayed. But we are all doing our best. And we all actually do care about each others success.
And I felt like the world really came into focus on the beach in the warm snow spouting Christmas tree watching the parade floats go by (what was the hold up? i’d love to know) seeing our schools and clubs and groups represented so brightly and those mind-blowing dancers with their stunning choreography and the snow pile deteriorate under the careful ministrations of hundreds of happy wild, free, only in the Florida Keys kids. 
