Deep roots and dreamers
Windswept and weary, we wandered out — once the curfew was lifted, of course — onto the streets of downtown Orlando on Sept. 11, 2017. Our deep roots in the area and the simple fact that our bay-adjacent Tampa home was in Evacuation Zone A made our trip to the City Beautiful the logical choice for avoiding Irma. Never mind that she split the difference in Lakeland, leaving us straddling two disaster zones, neither of which was as bad as they could have been.
I was a grad student at the University of Central Florida when Charley blasted through in 2004. Living in Delaney Park, I remember the seemingly ancient trees strewn about like matchsticks on canals, attached to disrupted mounds of deep-reaching roots that once tickled the center of earthen crust. They touched the ether for the first time in centuries, since some randomly placed acorns fell in the era of the Muskogee. Charley’s wrath upon the landscape was tangible and unmistakable. It also served as a natural, culling force upon the ecology of this still-young city.
Destruction is a part of nature’s circle, making room for new growth, and making the strong even stronger.
We, humans defiantly flouting nature’s forces — whether building cities below sea level, or ignoring the effects of our arrogance upon global climate — seek to push our own roots into the core. We build communities even in the face of known danger, trusting that our neighbors will come together in moments of crisis. We build homes and churches and village squares upon cities where even the Creek Peoples knew better. And then, when crisis rises, we are culled — if not in spirit, at least geographically — when our roots are not deep.
So we noted, on that postIrma walk down Orange Avenue, manicured squares decorating newly built apartment complexes where young trees, planted not for their relationship to the ecosystem but for their aesthetic value, were uprooted. The shallow roots that have invaded Orlando’s landscape were, this storm season, the true victims of Irma’s wrath. At the same time, the mighty trees that survived Charley, made stronger for the distress a decade earlier, tossed some moss-covered limbs and, here and there, did their best to disrupt daily life.
This time through, the deep-rooted survived.
My relationship with Orlando, made strong through the better part of 20 years as a resident, provided roots that drew me back even from as far away as Tampa.
Surviving in the 21st century’s first quintile, even in the sweet spot of Orlando’s adolescence, is a study in rootedness. It’s a testament to belonging. It’s a celebration of stormweathering and intercoastal community-building.
So, it makes sense that we cheer for the success of those among us whose roots are more shallow, even as they are deeper than we think. They are our resilient sapling survivors. They are the dreams of our forebears made real.
Challenged, we cherish immigrants and refugees, and children of immigrants, and the roots that they have placed in our sandy soil in the face of hundred mile per hour swirling headwinds. Whether those refugees are from Tampa, Mexico, or Syria — a week ago, a year ago, or a century ago — we make room for them in our collective embrace. Uniquely American, we make places to accept surging tides as they creep in toward us and away from the oceanic abyss. Whether those immigrants came illegally or if they came as the innocent children of illegal immigrants, they all came looking for an America that our own forebears sought. Save the first settlers along the Econlockhatchee, we are descended of immigrants whose goals were freedom and a better life for their children and their children’s children.
Because we survived Charley does not guarantee that we survive Irma, but it certainly raises the odds. And where we don’t celebrate the bravery of our newest neighbors, we deny the storms that we’ve been through and the value that they add to our interconnected root systems.
Every deep root starts as a sapling. Every citizen starts as a child. And most hurricanes begin as dust-devils on distant shores. Incumbent upon us, strollers upon our own youthful present, is the defiant, brave, broad view into the eye of an angry and misguided tempest.
Incumbent upon us, as Central Floridians, as Americans and as citizens of Earth, is to understand that every child has a dream and that every dream is made stronger when we stand together with our fists against the screaming winds of the storm.