It's not the fountain of youth, but it's a great vacation spot

Editor's note: Matt Wittmer is a Cape Girardeau native and an avid cyclist. He is helping plot a bike route from Canada to Key West, Fla., as part of the East Coast Greenway. Wittmer's portion of the ride started in September in Washington, D.C., and will end in Key West in November.

America's story is the epic of appetite. Nowhere has that story shouted itself more brashly than Florida. It is a legendary place. An idea, built on its Edenic reputation. It exists as an imposition of collective imagination. Due to constant in-migration, there is no binding myth of what it means to be Floridian. It is what you want it to be.

A volatile nor'easter ushered me across the St. Mary's River from Georgia. The weather was bad, my first real day of rain. At Fernandina Beach, a 25-knot wind straightened my spine like a stern ship captain. The ocean roiled, kicking up 6-foot waves and a creamy foam -- rare here, I was told and potentially destructive. The natives call the water on those days "Victory at Sea" in reference to the wild, blustery battles in old war movies.

The conditions made me think of Florida's equally unstable history, and the way a place can be exactly the opposite of one's expectations. Amelia Island, close to my crossing far in the peninsula's eastern corner, has flown eight flags. The entire state's identity, in fact, remains contested. I thought I saw a sign, "Welcome, Be Prepared for Deconstruction."

The one thing that encompasses the idea of Florida more fully than all others is the relationship of its people with its landscape. That bond exists anywhere, of course, but Florida is America at the edge, at its most sensitive and most vulnerable. Its ecosystems are fragile and unique. It is the perfect space to track our odyssey of appetite, an ideal barometer with which to measure the wake of our desire.

The state begins and ends with water. Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth turned out to be 300 years of Spanish bewilderment. He and following bands of explorer-warriors found no gold or silver. And most of La Florida then lay underwater. As a consequence, it remained an outpost, a captivating wasteland.

It wasn't until after the Civil War that engineering finally caught up with imagination. Florida was drained. Dry land led to railroads, railroads to development and development to rapid growth, unequaled tourism and eventually, large-scale environmental degradation. But everything paled in respect to the dream.

The word Florida conjures the word travel. It always has. The architects of the fantasy enjoyed unprecedented success in the 1920s. They saturated Northern newspapers with sexy advertisements touting unlimited potential. Newly mass-produced cars rolled south down fresh highways. Hucksters perfected their alluring sales pitch. A land boom was born, the dream made tangible, with one major consequence: Conservation conflicted with the purpose of a land of opportunity.

The natural systems that underlay Florida's stunning beauty were exploited for private gain. Everglades National Park now protects just more than a quarter of that ecosystem's original area.

Down here, though, hope grows on trees. Historian Herbert Hiller believes a convicting myth is developing in the tourist-developer-retirement trio. It is becoming enlightened to its impact and propelling a rising tide of consciousness and a strong will to redeem.

Is Florida forever young? I have a theory about de Leon's beguiling fountain. I think he found it without realizing it. Imagine his crew, sweaty and bug-swarmed, hacking its way through impenetrable forest and marsh. Suddenly, a clearing, and before them, like a liquid jewel set down, shimmered one of the state's hidden treasures, bracingly cold, and clear as a glass of Evian.

They're the perfect antidote for the climate and refreshment to the weary traveler. In one, I feel I can drink my way to the bottom. After some Chick-fil-A, I think I'll try.