Living in the Florida Keys is paradise, but during hurricane season it’s a game of roulette.  During August and September particularly, everyone living here watches for the distinctive comma-shaped weather systems that catapult off the west coast of Africa, one after the other, hurling towards us like clay pigeons at a skeet shoot.

As they tumble their way across the Atlantic, if they hold together they are given names, personified so that the mere mention of a single name begins to shape our lives.  Everyone, save for old-timers, seems to forget that hurricanes have been coming down this path from Africa forever, doing what they always do.  Once one is named, everyone, not just in the Florida Keys, but anywhere along the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, assumes it’s coming right at them, whether it is or not.  Everyone sees themselves in the center of the dreaded “cone.”

We all begin acting really weird.

• We become glued to the hurricane forecasting websites, becoming experts on steering currents that will hopefully send it anywhere but here.
• We fixate on the cones of uncertainty, the 3-day and the 5-day, hoping we’re not in them.
• We dread the call for a mandatory tourist evacuation, which is beyond our control.  It usually occurs way too early, long before the storm has even commited to a path of high probability, and it sucks away our livelihoods.   Since Katrina, no public official wants to take blame for making the wrong call, so tourists are asked to leave on beautiful sunny days, when the storm is over 1200 miles away, on the chance that it may come this way.  (In the Florida Keys, evacuations are staged, with visitors going first).
• Our vibrant communities become ghost towns, but hotels, restaurants, bars and tourists attractions stay open as long as they can, near empty, hoping to catch the last stragglers.
• We begin to hate the non-stop media crescendo of fear: the barrage of hyped-up cliches: “hunker down,” “barreling towards,” ”devastating force,” on gorgeous, sunny days.  While we know it’s done to sensationalize, it nonetheless plays to our fears and does a number on the psyche.
• Weariness sets in as we anticipate the sheer physicality of the work that lies ahead: shuttering our homes and businesses, hauling in patio furniture and potted plants, securing boats, and everything not permanently tied down, and knowing that once the storm has passed, we have to put everything back in place again.
• Instinctively we double-check our supplies, filling in what we used since the last event.  We haul out and stage generators, gas, coolers, ice, water, propane stoves, making them accessible should we stay.  We gas up our cars or gas stations may be out if we wait.
• Despite ourselves, we run a mental checklist of what to take and what to leave behind, should we decide to leave.
• If a mandatory resident evacuation is called, the roulette game gets edgier. The term ”mandatory’ is misleading as no one is forced to go – those who choose to stay, however, are on their own … no emergency services, no hospital.
• A mandatory resident evacuation is called, but we’re on the outside edge of the cone, and it’s 3 days away.  People scurry about like rats abandoning ship, going in every which direction.  It’s gorgeous out.  Stay or go?  Intellect and emotion are on a collision course.
• If we do leave, we pray, as we walk out the door, that our homes and everything we own will be OK.
• If we do leave, we wonder where we’ll go, and how we are going to afford this unplanned “vacation.”
• If we do leave, we hope, once it’s over, we’ll be allowed back in quickly.
• If we do leave, we live hour by anxious hour, our imaginations running wild.
• If we do leave, we wish we hadn’t, as if by being there we could will it away.

After all this angst, we’re out of the cone!

Like the stadium “wave,” it’s moved on; it’s someone else’s turn.  The tension vaporizes.  We disconnect, go back to normal, crank up our business and lives again as though nothing ever happened.  We’re ready to welcome visitors back to our islands of sunset sails, spectacular coral reefs, wonderful fishing, interesting sights, great restaurants, and fun nightspots, all in that unique relaxed atmosphere that permeates the Florida Keys.

So, why do we live here?  For the  tropical beauty, the quaintness, the quirkiness.  For the small-town lifestyle; for interesting friends.  And, for the proximity to nature - the good and the bad.

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