Temptation of bikinis gives way to cold reality

Last week, temptation came my way in the form of a bikini.

What? No, I was not tempted by what was inside the bikini. I was tempted by the very idea of the bikini – the idea that dozens of people were wearing them on Thanksgiving Day, and not just wearing them, but tugging at the straps of them while frolicking about in the warm Atlantic waves.

What I was actually tempted by was Florida.

Just about all of it, really. The climate of Florida. The lush coral colors of Florida. The palm trees of Florida. The fact that I could wear shorts and sandals and sunblock while shopping for a Thanksgiving turkey in Florida.

We visited my sister in a suburb of Miami for the first time this Thanksgiving and I have no real explanation for why we hadn’t shown up earlier. My sister and her family have lived there for four or five years and have regularly beseeched us to visit. We hadn’t for a variety of reasons, the most baffling of which I now find to be: We didn’t think we’d like the joint.

We didn’t think we’d like the crowds, the freeways or the millions of nut-cases we imagined living there. We didn’t think we’d like the bugs and the snakes and the humidity and the lizards. We didn’t think we’d like the sheer flatness of Florida, in which the highest point is 345 feet above sea level.

My wife, Carol, and I are mountain people. We grew up in the Rocky Mountains and we have a snobbish prejudice against places too warm and too flat. We assumed the whole state of Florida had already been ruined by millions of new residents crammed up against the beaches and that nothing was left to see except senior-citizen condos and golf courses.

Well, all I can say is, we began to rethink our position one second after we got off the plane. There’s something inviting and – what’s the word? – warm about 75 degrees at 9 p.m. in November.

For the next five days, our Northwest windproof fleece vests stayed packed away and the shorts came out. We spent a morning at Hollywood Beach, diving into the waves and combing for pieces of shell and coral. We went fishing offshore for king mackerel off of Fort Lauderdale. We played a few rounds of golf (without needing the “winter golf gloves” I keep in my bag).

We spent a day at Everglades National Park, walking past dozing alligators. We saw birds we had seen only in books: the anhinga, the white ibis, the great egret, the snowy egret.

We ate at Cuban restaurants, Mexican restaurants and at a seafood restaurant specializing in “garlic crab clusters.”

“You know,” I said, wiping a little garlic crab off my chin, “I’m beginning to like this Florida place. I could get used to this.”

By our last day, I felt totally Florida-ized. By this I mean I no longer felt any compulsion to wear socks.

So, yes, it was with downcast eyes that I got on the plane back to frigid Spokane, a place almost entirely devoid of palm trees and coral. I entertained secret fantasies of selling the cross-country skis and hiking boots and going completely Jimmy Buffett. I saw myself standing in a saltwater flat in the Keys, fishing for bonefish, lazily applying some sunblock to my nose and wondering whether we had the fixin’s for a nice Christmas Eve mojito back in our cozy Florida beach cabin.

No wonder 12 million people move to Florida every minute.

The next morning, I was walking our dog in the Spokane snow. I frankly resented this. Why do we put up with this when we could just as easily be living in Fort Lauderdale?

The walk lasted an hour and by the end of it, I had my answer: Because walking through a Ponderosa pine forest in a gentle snow is every bit as beautiful as walking through the Florida Everglades. The pine boughs were frosted white and the nuthatches were hammering merrily on bark. Down on Hangman Creek, the great blue herons were motionless, like stately gray-steel sculptures, just the way they were at that same moment in the Everglades.

But what about the cold? Well, our particular bluff walk has about a 400-foot elevation gain, which is like walking from the bottom to the top of Florida. After hiking up those switchbacks, I had my jacket around my waist and my Northwest fleece vest clutched in my hand.

I was sweating as if I were in Florida. It just took a little more work.