by Ray Jason
I am rowing home to my boat, which is anchored in a beautiful, isolated cove near Key West. Suddenly, the solitude and peacefulness is shattered by the sound of two military jets shrieking back towards the nearby airbase.
As I cover my ears
and look scornfully towards them, a sport fishing boat comes blasting out of
the mangroves with 500 horsepower ensnared in its outboard motors. I wonder to myself if the fish that they will
catch in their $100,000 boat will taste any better than the one that I just speared
from my little rowboat.
When they pass
beside me and see me covering my ears, they holler over to me, “That’s the
sound of freedom.” I nod
noncommittally. For the remainder of the
day my mind could not stop thinking about what I wish I could have said to
them. If only we could have shared a
beer and some grilled fish and some open-mindedness, I would have tried to give
them a different perspective on the true essence of that sound.
