Hotenfreude.

The author presents reflections on his first winter spent in South Florida. I hate to gloat, but I missed winter this year. I moved from Washington, D.C., to Miami Beach in late fall, and it has been sunny and 75 degrees just about every day since. I never thought I cared that much about weather, but it turns out that I do. I've gotten less grumpy and less Type A. Before I moved down here--it's only for a year, unless I can convince my employers at The Washington Post to move the paper to Florida--my friends warned that I'd miss all the smart people that surrounded me in Washington and New York and Boston. And I suppose it's true that South Beach is a bit more Scarface and Birdcage than "Masterpiece Theatre" or Annie Hall. But, if all those people up north are so damned smart, how come they're not living where it's sunny and 75 degrees every day? My book is supposed to be a history of the Everglades, a kind of morality play about man's relationship with nature. I was going to make the point that South Florida is now inhospitable not only to the vermin, reptiles, and other wildlife that used to thrive in the Everglades, it has become unsustainable for human beings, too. The economy is a Ponzi scheme, where everyone sells houses or lays tile or finances mortgages or does some other kind of work that requires attracting an endless parade of additional house-sellers and tile-layers and so on. In other words, life in paradise has started to suck. But now that I'm here, I've recognized a slight problem with my argument: Life in paradise doesn't actually suck.