Famed local author Al Burt offered his stirring and heartfelt observations about this glorious land, all it has to offer, and the losses it has suffered. More Photos

Old Florida Forever Bar-B-Que and Startup Celebration.

On December 9, 2001, an Old Florida Forever Bar-B-Que and Startup Celebration at the historic Carr Farm near Micanopy celebrated the public unveiling of the Conservation Trust for Florida, a new land trust whose mission is to conserve working rural lands throughout the state. Al Burt, local author and keynote speaker, presented the following inspirational talk:

"In a beautiful setting like this, with this great cause, I am moved more toward silence than speech. But don't get your hopes up. I'm going to talk anyway.

It is a privilege to be here at Archie Carr's place, where he communed with gators and snakes and spiders and bugs of all sorts... and then later wrote about them with such precision and care that he made all the rest of us care about them, too.

It is fitting that in this place we remember that there is beauty and significance in weeds as well as roses. We need to keep in mind that profit and progress are not necessarily the same. We need to be aware that there is significance not only in headlines and high-rises but also in the small things of Florida, the natural sounds and smells and sights that we grew up with, the things that give Florida a different dimension and make it a special place, the things that tell us who we are and what Florida really is. The things that we attach to and that influence our customs and tastes and therefore make us Floridians – people distinctive because by birth or choice we have adapted to this unusual peninsula.

We need to keep alive these natural places that reach and salve hungers that transcend our conscious appetites, places that have the capacity for giving us a mental recharge, places that in effect become spiritual watering holes for jaded lives... we need that.

Organizations such as the Conservation Trust for Florida work to give us those places. They work to set aside or save natural areas that shore up our memories with living testimony. They save places that won't let us forget.
Whatever the distractions and distortions around them, however strip-zoned and ugly the road there might be, these places deliver a living piece of Florida that performs much the same way as it did 50 years ago, and even before that. They give us a sense of connection with how Florida evolved and what Florida really is... despite wars and depressions, hurricanes and freezes, Democrats and Republicans, it's still Florida.

Such places nourish respect for our natural past, and they encourage us to recognize that what we have left is too precious to let hucksters squander on those who never have dug a sandspur out of a bare foot, or sipped from a clear spring, or been struck with fear in the woods at the raspy warning of a rattlesnake nearby.

In Florida, little stays in place except memory... our memories are important. They give us a benchmark with which we can decide whether our lives are getting better or getting worse – and why.

The Spanish conquistadors came to Florida looking for a fountain of youth – and never found it. They didn't find it because they didn't recognize it. Florida was not a place that restored youth, but it was a place with such a richness in its environment that every hour, every day new beginnings and new capacities for life were created.

Where there are natural places left... where organizations like the Trust can save living pieces of Florida... we retain the possibility for new beginnings and new capacities."

– Al Burt