Illustration by Harry Tennant
The winter of 2000 was tepid, as Tallahassee winters tend to be. The world had just survived Y2K, the great millennium scare that had survivalists burrowing into their bunkers (and others holding their breath until midnight passed without incident). But as spring bloomed, I was flailing, smack dab out in the open, barely hanging on.
Amid a state governmental administration change, I had been asked to resign my leadership position at the Florida Lottery. To make matters worse, I found myself on the downhill, slip-sliding from a recent breakup with someone I thought I loved. Who would want me now? Jobless. Heartsick. My bones picked clean. Possessing not a clue of who and what I wanted to be next.
With a few remaining dollars of unemployment benefit riding light in my pocket, I made my way south from Tallahassee for a solitary weekend stay at the Lodge at Wakulla Springs, hoping for some scrap of solace. A hint of which direction I ought to venture next. I am an expert at being alone, but a failure at living lonesome.
This was not my first trip to Wakulla Springs. The Sunday before the start of my seventh-grade year, I visited the state park with my girlfriend and her family. Yards from the sapphire waters, in the long shadows of ancient cypress trees, we had ourselves a lavish picnic. A last hurrah. A feast of deviled eggs and chicken salad sandwiches.
Even way back when, I was figuring things out. Wondering why it was it didn’t feel right when my girlfriend took hold of my hand. Wishing and praying that when she sat close, I could feel the topsy-turvy way I felt sometimes felt when I ventured near a boy.
She was fearless, much braver than me. Sun-kissed and soaring. Always, I was lurking behind, curling myself in the shadows, keeping my hands just out of her reach.
Pondering those memories, I wandered down to the springs where she and I had swum back when I was 13—to watch folks leaping from the diving platform that rose two stories into the Florida sky.
I marveled at how easy it is for some people to fly, as they plunged into the same prehistoric waters I fretfully jumped into all those years ago. It seemed to me my whole life had been climbing ladders and tumbling off of them. But there is a freedom in falling. A freedom in letting go. Sinking. Floating weightless. Baptized in a cool-cool spring alongside tarpon and reptilian creatures. And there’s a glory in swimming your way back to the surface. Starting all over again.
Robert Gwaltney is an Atlanta-based writer originally from Cairo, Georgia. He is the award-winning author of The Cicada Tree and was recognized as 2023 Georgia Author of the Year, First Novel, in 2023 by the Georgia Writers Association. By day, he works as vice president of operations for Easterseals North Georgia.
This article appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Southbound.
