Like the saltwater of the Intracoastal Waterway as seen from the I-1 drive between St. Augustine and Jacksonville, Florida and I have a deep history that runs like high tide through my veins. When I was maybe seven years old, I took a trip down with my grandparents to visit family. At the time, only my dad’s brother and his family lived down here--nowadays, I also have an aunt in Deltona and some of my mom’s family in St. Augustine. I remember returning after a little longer than a week’s stay, sitting in the living room at my parents’ house upon our reunion, and crying. On so many levels, even at that age, the state embodied magic to me--the ocean, the warmth, the curious array of birds. I didn’t want to be away from it. 

The memory comes to me as a flash at some point while I’m in the car with my aunt Kim. Kim, my mother’s sister-in-law, is the personification of fierce love in several ways. Many of my relatives innately are. However, there’s a way I connect to her brand of strength in particular--whether it’s listening to her talk about her relationships with her female friends, her dynamic with her parents, or the chapter of our family’s hell when her son had cancer--that I haven’t found with most other females in my life. It’s raw, yet compassionate and grounded. It leaks through her when she sits at a table while we prepare a mailing for her kids’ school one night, as she tells me how amazed she is to see how I, my brother, and cousins have grown up; or when the two of us sit on the beach and talk about the nature of love. It hits me hardest when she brings up my grandmother.

Mary Lou Joseph was one of the great loves of my young life, and a presence who I have had to miss on the daily for around six years. It is normal for grandparents to pass early on in a person’s life, but I confess that the cosmos and I have had a couple of arguments where I’ve relentlessly whined about this. In her wisdom, her brilliance, and her unapologetic genuinity, she was a magical creature. All of the things I am learning about womanhood and life and love have a tendency to blow my head open more frequently than I’m prone to admitting, and as much as I feel cheated out of the perfect teacher, I feel guilt over neglecting my time with her in the final stages of her life. 

Before M.L. moved next door to us when I was maybe nine years old, she lived in a blue house on a cliff by Vinegar Flats, and before that, she lived in Florida. It makes sense to me that the most magical person I ever knew in my life spent many of her years in a place that keeps its magic a secret. Yes, there are Dunkin’ Donuts all over the damn place; ditto for housing developments, confusing billboards, and strip malls. But if you look a wee bit beyond each of those things, you find hordes of cranes standing at the edge of man-made ponds. Marshes that are home to manatees in crystalline waters. Trees that have towered like giants for hundreds of years. A sky that boasts a variety of clouds to interrupt shades of blue that barely seem to belong on this planet. 

Inland from Daytona Beach, a small town named Deltona is home to my Aunt Jeannie these days. She has long dark hair and the kind of laugh that will, even at this age, cause a rupture of joy so deep inside me that once I join her, it’s hard to stop. She possesses the sort of good nature where my words begin to spill the minute I sit in the car with her, and even though they slow down at points during our time together, they never really stop; the sort of good nature that furthers my belief in the magic that is inevitably drawn here (she is a Seattle transplant.) During our time together, we pass “Gilmore Girls” references back and forth, gleefully wander around Target, and take small adventures of all sorts.  

She also lives minutes away from a place I’ve always dreamt of visiting. Cassadaga is oft referred to as “the psychic capital of the world.” A drive into the settlement along a tree-lined road shrouds the visitor in an eerie charm, and a giant wooden sign reads “Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp” right at the edge of where a small collection of houses begins. Cassadaga is tiny--it warrants the title “unincorporated community” instead of “town.” It was claimed in 1835 by a man named George Colby, who was prophesied to start a spiritual community during a seance in New York; since blooming into a hub for seers, mystics, and gurus. Bright Eyes, one of my favorite bands growing up, recorded an album named after the place, the opening track of which---“Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)”---has at moments been the very slim thread that has held me together and reminded me the world is a beautiful place to live.

 The center of the activity is Hotel Cassadaga, across the street from the welcome center, and kitty corner from two blocks of home-operated psychic readers. There are multiple shops jam-packed with crystals, oils, incense, tarot cards, and the like. In one of these, I pay $25 to have a picture taken of my aura. The polaroid comes out completely red-colored. Red, in auric language, is said to indicate passion and physicality. In theory, a person has multiple colors in their auras. In this photo, my outline is swallowed by a large cloud of red, my body dark, and magenta hanging over the top.

“You need to let go of some of your anger,” the aura photographer tells me. “Forgive the people who have mistreated you.” 

I tell her I’m working on it.

She points to the photo of her aura she wears as a badge around her neck, which is a murky white-indigo-blue, indicating enlightenment, she tells me. She’s worked very hard to have the aura she does, she says. 

“You have potential, but I don’t think you love yourself,” she tells me.

My nostrils flare and I cock an eyebrow. If I wasn’t necessarily angry before, I am now. This is my least favorite conversation to have with people, and it’s one I’ve had a few times over the years. Because I am emotional, and because I have a dark streak, it’s been assumed that, as a woman, I don’t love myself; that couldn’t be further from the truth. Before I can pick a fight with her about this, she launches into a fifteen-minute oral history of how she acquired her aura camera. She writes a number down on the packet she gave me, and tells me I should consider buying one. 

Afterwards, Jeannie and I wander back towards the car. On the ground, I find an action figure with flowers pinned to it. An odd artifact. 

“What is that?” Jeannie asks me.

“It’s a fairy,” I tell her, because that seems the most appropriate answer. I take it with me, and later, pack it into the box of stuff I send back home to myself. 

 After Jeannie sends me off to Kim, I spend the next few days exploring the corner of St. Augustine they live in, drinking a lot of iced coffee, and running errands with her. She takes me to the old village of St. Augustine to explore the shops and eat gourmet popsicles. She also makes a point to take me to the Fountain of Youth Archaeological park. 

St. Augustine is currently celebrating its 450th anniversary, having been founded in 1565. The Fountain of Youth is a site that traces back through its history, with replicas of early buildings, boats, and informational activities such as a planetarium. It is paradise for my geeky side, as I bounce around in models of old chapels and down the boardwalk that stretches a coastal inlet. The park is littered with peacocks that roam freely, some of which are albino, and the roar of a cannon periodically disrupts the quiet to send my aunt and I jumping out of our skin. In a small theater, we watch the voyage of Ponce De Leon explained on a three-dimensional globe. We leave just before the park closes. 

My last day in Florida, my aunt Lisa (who is married to my dad’s brother) takes me on a bike tour of Jacksonville Beach. We drink at a rooftop bar that overlooks the sea, which is a variety of colors in the day’s calm waters. We coast along the beach shortly afterwards, for miles. I remember a bike ride I took through the area a few days prior, wondering if I was bad at loving; now, as a level of surreality sets in, the world becomes a simple matter of me passing beach goers, following my aunt, listening to the approach of a storm in a distance, and feeling my legs push the pedals. It feels a little like sorrow, but a little moreso like freedom. Having time with my aunts down here has affected me in such a way. The three of them--all strong, smart, gentle women--have allowed me to share myself in ways I’m still learning how to do, and what I take from this is an immense amount of relief that can only be explained by the mystical powers of love. 

Before I catch my train, my uncle Tom takes my cousin Andrea and I to dinner on the river in Jacksonville. Only a few brief moments into being seated on the porch, the three of us fixate on a cloud of flying black objects hovering only slightly yonder. Throughout the course of our meal, we watch this giant mass of birds mimic the ocean’s movement in the air, flying in perfect harmony like currents. Other patrons take photos, and the waitress gapes in awe. None of us have seen anything like this before. 

The bewitchery of Florida to me is present in some of the most beautiful shoreline to be found in the U.S., the wild that seems unfazed by the presence of a human world, and the succession of people I love who have found home here. The rest of the world seems to see a very different beast than I do, in the politics, retirement communities, and pastel-colored houses of Miami, but they just haven’t met the place properly. The feeling of leaving isn’t as devastating as it was when I was younger--I have the power now to return at will, and still things to look forward to on this trip. After I go see more family in the Atlanta area, I’m pulling a big fat smiley-faced route to Los Angeles, where I have a free ticket to see my most favorite of bands.

But at one point, Kim whispers to me under her breath “You should really move to Florida, Audrey.” She might be right. If I ever really want to start over, I have a trove of resources and dear people to make that a reality.

Yet it might be better to leave my relationship with it as it is--a place to escape that  feels like home.