- November 23, 2024
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From the moment Lucy Tobias first drove over the John Ringling Causeway while visiting Sarasota for a travel writers’ meeting, she knew it was the place she wanted to call home.
“The windows were down, and the salt air was coming in, and I said out loud, ‘This is where I'm supposed to be,” she recalled.
Tobias decided to speak with her pastor, who told her she was being called.
“Called to do what?” she asked.
“You'll figure it out when you get there,” he said.
Within three months, she had relocated from Ocala, and for the past 13 years, from her home in Sarasota, has been continuing her mission to encourage people to “walk slow and meander."
The author of books including “50 Great Walks in Florida," and “The Zen of Florida Gardening,” along with the blog “Wednesday Notes,” Tobias released a new book, "Floating in Florida: Discover 21 Amazing Adventures on Florida's Hidden Waters" on Sept. 4.
There were many steps that led her to those waters.
Tobias always has enjoyed the natural world, having long practiced watercolor and acrylic art, and later photography.
She began walking in Ocala, but Suzi, her dog at the time, wasn't as enthused about it.
When the newspaper where she worked as a reporter, the Ocala StarBanner, began reporting on "a year of fitness activities," she began sharing her knowledge of walking.
“I'm really not all that bright — like if you were to ask me every single tree and flower — I don't know that. So I quickly started getting people to come along (on her walks), and they would talk about all this stuff, and I would just be the celebrity walker who would show up,” she said.
In 2008, she published “50 Great Walks in Florida," a book based on her research walking throughout the state.
Eventually, her publisher asked her, to define a "Great Walk." She took a week and settled on “a short but significant jaunt where you get some exercise, and you're done in time for lunch.”
As far as she has traveled, she said there is plenty to enjoy close to home in Sarasota, if people take the time to slow down. She noted that Sarasota has changed during her time here, with what appears to be the doubling of traffic.
“What's the antidote (for traffic and stress)? The antidote is to go walk along the bay, go to Oscar Scherer State Park, just to go walk a lot. But we're going to have to intentionally put it on the calendar, put on the walking shoes, and make ourselves do it, because our stress levels are going up even without us noticing,” she said.
She's even created a small walk in her own backyard, a place which was featured in a 2022 tour of private gardens by the Sarasota County Butterfly Club.
Thirteen years ago, she planted firebrush, and the garden took off from there.
It currently includes two goldfish ponds. There were once four, although nature ended up gaining the upper hand. A heron tore up the lining of one pond that she dug herself on a whim.
"It was 8 feet long and 6 feet wide, about 3 feet deep, and it lasted a year and a half, "she said. "It was magic. It was wonderful."
A raccoon also destroyed an elevated pond.
"They just get in there and tear everything up. All these things you learn when you actually have a garden," she said.
One of Tobias' favorite local walks is the loop at Bayfront Park.
She said walkers should be sure to go to the “wonderful" dolphin fountain, where they will often find plein air sketchers and can see “incredible views” of the Ringling Causeway.
“The thing about walking is it changes your horizon, and that walk will do it for you,” she said. You might feel all confined if you're in the house all day, and you go out there and you go, ‘There's the bay, and beyond this, the intercoastal.’ It's just a whole different view.”
She notes there are two state parks in Sarasota.
“That's usually the first place I like to send people, because their paths are well maintained,” she said. “You can't get lost… You don't have to have a compass and a guidebook and all that stuff.”
Over the years, she’s taken to new terrain, which has included labyrinths, or spiral paths in the ground.
“They're for healing and de-stressing and banishing chaos, because it's only one path in, one path out; you can't get lost, and so that's what makes it a sacred space,” she said.
They are the subject of her 2018 book “Circle the Center: Labyrinths in Florida,” which features 95 of the 130 labyrinths she walked in the state.
However, the number of labyrinths has grown so much since the book’s publication that she decided to stop printing the book.
One hidden labyrinth, she said, is found behind the Women's Exchange and Kanaya Condominiums, a complex she said is built on Feng shui principles.
She also highlighted a visit to the labyrinth at First Presbyterian Church of Sarasota with the group Sarasota Urban Sketchers, where they sang "Amazing Grace" and listened to the sound reverberate off the wall beside it.
“That was a sacred moment,” she said. “It really was. I was in tears. I couldn't sing.”
To write her latest book, “Floating in Florida,” Tobias spent 10 months wandering the state and taking tours on pontoon boats.
She enjoyed experiences from a captain singing original songs on the Rainbow River in Dunnellon, to glass bottom boats and a houseboat in the Florida Keys.
“I was so surprised at how different all the environments were, and the captains were a real joy, because most of the captains are locals; they’ve grown up there and they tell you stories that you would never hear otherwise,” Tobias said.
Her favorite experience was the "wonderful" De León Springs State Park near DeLand, including its old sugar mill with griddles in the tables for making pancakes, and its eco boat tour.
One experience in Sarasota she also found not-to-miss was the Eco-tours at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium.
“I didn't know that Sarasota Bay was so fascinating, and when we went out there it was breeding season for the wading birds, so we went past rookeries and saw Roseate spoonbills, and that's right here in our backyard,” she said.
As many different environments as she traverses or floats among, however, there’s one unifying theme to her writing.
As she sits in her garden, she says, “I come out here, and I realize that I'm connected to the butterflies. If I was to use pesticides, there would be no butterflies. We are connected, and when I go out on the rivers, and the captains are talking about the pollution and the fact you can't see to the bottom, now we're connected; that water is being polluted because of what we're doing. Everything, everything is connected, and that's huge, the more you think about that.”
