The Last Word

Whenever i teach a seminar in fiction writing, I hammer home time and again one major point: God, as they say, may indeed be in the details, but so is the unequivocal truth. The corporeal attributes of a character or place reveal everything. Words may lie, but the details don't.

Here, then, is the personality profile of Southwest Florida, assembled as a list of my favorite things about life on the Gulfshore.

U Our Conch Republic dress code. We so worship leisure and comfort here that dressing up for dinner at a four-star restaurant means choosing the khaki shorts that have pleats. My executive wife loves the fact that she can go to work on most days sans hose.

U With surf shops, Trans-Ams, flowing beer and plenty of tanned, tattooed bodies, Fort Myers Beach is the Gulfshore's Coney Island and a fascinating study of human sexuality and hedonism.

U Sunsets anytime, anywhere, though I am partial to the sharp-edged, hot-pink lozenges common in mid-winter.

U Dolphins.

U All the fruit trees that grow in our yards: mangoes and cherimoyas and lychees, oranges, grapefruit, papaya and tamarind.

U The Lazy Flamingo at Blind Pass, its pot of steamed clams flavored with celery and Cajun spices.

U The azure-and-emerald feathers I find on my street, shed by the noisy flock of wild parrots that resides somewhere in my neighborhood.

U Violent, humbling summertime thunderstorms with rain that can fill an overturned Frisbee in minutes and lightning so frequent and deafening and close it is hard not to think of it as a censure delivered from above.

U The plump frogs who sit at night on my windowsill for the tasty crowd of bugs drawn by the glow from the table lamp inside.

U Our population of retirees whose lives have touched us in countless ways. Over the years I've bumped into the designer of the Edsel, a scientist from the nuclear project at Los Alamos and a former United Nations ambassador from France who sat near Nikita Krushchev when he banged his shoe on the table in anger.

U Cayo Costa. The undeveloped barrier island north of Captiva, preserved by the state for generations to come, is one of the few places in Southwest Florida where the patient sheller can still stumble upon a perfect, large whelk or conch.

U The way my calendar and U.S. 41 both open up in May, after the tourists have gone.

U Kayaking on any of our meandering waterways-the Orange River, Hickey Creek, the Imperial River-surprising an egret or heron perched upon the copper-colored root of a mangrove.

U What my family calls water glitter-the way the bays and rivers and Gulf sparkle like a diamond in the mid-afternoon sun.

U Drinking a margarita or mojito beneath a chickee hut (a shelter constructed from tree limbs and palm fronds) at any beachfront hotel or restaurant.

U Historic McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers, with its stately royal palms lining the road and the multicultural neighborhoods it dissects, where kids sell mangoes on the street and walkers stop to share stories about their dogs.

U The smugness I feel almost weekly, knowing that I get to experience all of the above in daily life when the unfortunate souls in the upper 48 must pay thousands of dollars to experience the same thing once a year. HB

Ad Hudler, a novelist and self-appointed ambassador for the Gulfshore, lives in Fort Myers with his wife and daughter and can be reached through his Web site, www.adhudler.com. His most recent book is South-ern Living, published by Ballantine Books.