I live on Florida’s northern Gulf Coast, on the edge of the world, alone except for the occasional boyfriend or husband, always in the company of pets, books, art, friends, and sundry wildlife. Only part-time neighbors inhabit the houses closest to mine. On this narrow sandbar there is but one store, which is rarely open and where a carton of milk will cost you five times what it costs in town. The only real commerce that occurs here is illegal, and no one speaks of it, so it may as well not happen. Though I have less money than anyone I know, I rarely wake up depressed and often feel inappropriately rich. I suppose it’s all this beauty: dunes, water, sky, and wildflowers whose lives are so temporary they tremble in silence between life and death.