Colorful roosters wandered the streets and sidewalks. Two-and-a-half-foot-long pods of seeds dangled from exotic trees. Ripe and heavy mangoes fell from laden branches. Through a lapse in planning, a tiny yellow plane carried us to Dry Tortugas, a national park with a pleasing, open fort of brick that was used in the 1800s as a prison, a prison situated in a tropical heaven, surrounded by ocean. Magnificent Frigate Birds, living up to their names, floated on wind currents above the waters.

I'd had little interest in this part of the world, yet here we were chasing after species of birds to add to son's life list. My strongest memory of the little-planned, break-neck-paced road trip to the Florida Keys is of the search for the Antillian Nighthawk. Son had done his research, and knew they were often seen at the Key West International Airport. We drove there late in the afternoon, arriving too early for nighthawks. What might have been a tedious hour or two, hanging around a parking lot for a small rambling airport, was rather lovely. Pink and coral bougainvillea bloomed rapturously on the old chain-link fences there, fluttering their pastel petals in the temperate breeze. We walked about with little thought.

Making their single-syllable calls, the Common Nighthawks showed up first over the runway just after sunset, and then, hurray, the Antilleans put in an appearance, differentiated from their cousins only by their multi-syllabic calls. A new species for the life list.

But I have no life list; it’s all the companionable loitering at the airport I remember, the physical sense of having no demands but to exist for awhile, vividly remembered perhaps because it was a gift that was not sought.