Editor’s Letter

Breaking Out

In the early days of 2023, it may be time to explore a larger sense of place—and purpose

Written by MARIE SPEED

here’s a reason this magazine won “Best Overall Magazine” and “Magazine of the Year” last year at the statewide Florida Magazine Association Awards. Its dedicated staff of designers, editors, writers and sales and production people work tirelessly to produce 18 titles a year through Boca and Delray magazines, as well as our three custom publications for the Worth Avenue Association, The Boca Raton, and the Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce. That is a massive amount of “bespoke” material to write and edit and sell and design, and the workload often finds us lost in our computer screens for days on end, forgetting what month or season it is in real time (magazine time is always a few months ahead) or what the weather’s like outside or any number of other bizarre occupational hazards. We are hands-on here; the devil doesn’t wear Prada—she wears earbuds plugged into a tape recorder.

Which is why I decided that this year, it’s time to force a little sunlight in. To rediscover where we live, the place we are always celebrating and documenting and exploring in our pages. My little sister came to visit before the holidays, and it was my first taste in too long of South Florida. We dove into complete tourist mode and boarded the Brightline to Miami—with lunch at a Key Biscayne landmark with a stunning view of the city skyline reflected in the bay. We went almost completely because we wanted to ride the train. And we did, up and back, town by little town whipping past.

We drove up past Jupiter to Jonathan Dickinson State Park and bought a seat on a pontoon boat that putt-putted up the Loxahatchee River to Trapper Nelson’s cabin, white ibis like candles in the trees, winter cypress and cascading Carolina aster among the thick green mangroves. We wandered through the old ramshackle compound of cabins and cages that were the province of the Loxahatchee wild man back in the day, and we stopped on a boardwalk on the way back to look for alligators in a dark creek by the roadside. A day later, we even rode the Lady Atlantic down the Intracoastal from Delray to Boca, looking for manatees, sipping Bloodies on the upper deck, watching storm clouds roll up in the deep vast bowl of sky that is South Florida’s backdrop.

I never do things like this. I am always too busy. There are looming deadlines and household chores and errands to run and all the other things that crowd into my life, week in and week out. But this year, I believe I have made a resolution to push the to-do list a little off center, to take a walk on the Marsh Trail at Loxahatchee, dust off the kayak, watch the twilight deepen from a chair at the beach instead of Lester Holt from my living room couch.

It’s a New Year, after all. And it’s past time to rediscover where we live—and why we live here.