Here & Now

Can you feel it? about this time every year, Southwest Florida rises like Atlantis from the Gulf of Mexico, as our little oasis is lightened by about 150,000 people, 75,000 vehicles, 500,000 credit cards, 200,000 checkbooks and untold tons of essential stuff. Oh, and 700 pounds of miniature fluffy dogs, along with their 1,500 pounds of Steuben water bowls. I’m not kidding. My dainty canine friend Jolee, who sometimes sleeps over when her parents are away, has a crystal dish with a better "ping" than my best wine glasses. Anyway, you know how I love my statistics, shaky though they may be, and I’m safe because the real statisticians are all golfing somewhere up North at the moment. So I can say with impunity that our summer elevation above sea level is currently about five inches above winter elevations.

Higher elevation is a good thing, right? But maybe we shouldn’t be messing with Mother Nature here. So here’s my plan to return the water level to winter levels. I didn’t invent this scheme—the state of Delaware did—but I’ve infused it with a bit of Gulfshore panache. Delaware is building a most awesome artificial reef 16 miles offshore with retired New York subway cars. Seven hundred of them so far. The result, according to The New York Times, is a rich, oceanic "fish condo" that’s attracting such massive numbers of flounder and bass that it’s become one of America’s top saltwater fishing destinations. Good for the ecosystem, good for tourism. But this isn’t Delaware. I’m thinking gated reef with guardhouse, and instead of subway cars, we’d use retired Lexuses and yachts. Triple benefit: The sea level rises, putting nature in balance; our streets and waterways get cleared of passé pre-2008 models; and, most importantly, our marine population gets the quality of real estate they deserve. I offered my excellent plan, free of charge, to Collier County Zone Management’s artificial reef guru Pamela Keyes, who murmured something about taking it under advisement. I guess her people will get back to my people.

So, here we are in june. once again, the Gulfshore belongs just to us, the ones the snowbirds feel sorry for as they escape to cooler summer climes. We actually want them to think we’re suffering down here, don’t we? Their favorite line is "It’s not the heat—it’s the humidity." Uh huh. What they don’t know—and I’m not telling—is that humidity is a miracle cure. It keeps the skin supple and youthful. We also want them to smirk at our daily weather maps. You know, the seven identical Monday-through-Sunday boxes with the angry lightning bolt skewering big, ugly thunderclouds. We must never reveal that the rain blows in at precisely 4 p.m. and disappears at 4:30 p.m. on the dot, leaving the prettiest rainbows you ever saw. Sometimes the sun stays out through the whole thing, its rays filtering onto glistening emerald landscapes.

Yes, our incredible lightness of being comes partly from the dispersing of the crowds and the rejuvenating humidity. But there’s more. When all those credit cards and checkbooks depart for the North, the end-of-season bargains come out. While some of the top golf courses close in summer, there’s plenty of space on the others, and now’s the time to pick up on some real deals. Just yesterday, I received my invitation to join The Club Pelican Bay (Naples, 239-597-1183). Summer residents-only golf memberships are $3,640 with no initiation fee. Practically a giveaway compared with the regular $100,000 initiation fee plus about $9,400 in annual dues and assessments. Even so, Pelican Bay has one of the best deals going, considering that some private clubs start with initiation fees at $200,000 and up. Way up. Not having been invited, I can’t confirm this, but the word on the links is that the initiation fee at the ultra-exclusive Old Collier Golf Club is $295,000, more or less. One of the prettiest courses around is the Arthur Hills design at The Club at Renaissance (Fort Myers, 239-561-4170), where initiation fees are practically pocket change at $68,000.

Speaking of dollars, summer is the best time to gather the most perfect of them all: the pristine white sand dollar. Most shell-seekers comb the beaches in winter, especially around the world-famous Sanibel Shell Fair in March. Insiders know that the best time for shelling actually is between May and September, when storms way out at sea disturb the creatures’ beds and send them on the tide to our barrier island sandbars. And the only ones here to discover them are you and me. Before you go sand-dollaring, here are some helpful tips.

There are two basic varieties of sand dollar. The first variety is alive. It is brown, fuzzy and moldy-looking. The second variety is skeletal. It is white, smooth and looks like porcelain. It is illegal, and not particularly rewarding, to take home the first. Living sand dollars, which bury themselves just beneath the sandy sea bottom (you can find them with your toes), have gazillions of prickly little legs that move in all directions. If you hold them too long, your fingers turn a jaundiced shade of yellow. But after it has transitioned to that Great Sand Bar in the Sky, the sun slowly bleaches its skeleton, revealing a beautiful, embossed star design at its center. Those are the treasures. If you yearn for more in-depth conchology, this would be the place: www.conchologistsofamerica.org/collecting. Or, visit www.sanibelisland.com.

Aren’t we lucky to be here, now, in the month of June! We can get walk-on tee times and receive our anti-aging treatments compliments of Mother Nature. We don’t want this to end. So when talking with our dear friends and relatives up North, let’s remember to sigh deeply and say: "Oh, my, it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity." Then hang up the phone, grab your shelling basket, and savor the moment.