Jupiter in the Mangroves

Written by Adriana Beltrano

Many paths will lead you down to the Jupiter beach. 

Most will guide you to the bumpy sand with wooden staircases. Their handrails anchor into the tough concrete and, like the docks attached to some great ship, they invite you aboard to climb down and become marooned on the beach with nothing to do but drink barely alcoholic canned beverages and wade in the salty shallow sea. 

There are some that you must traverse by ducking under palms and branches along short shifting paths, but it is fairly easy to do so. Maybe you’ll skin a knee on some wood, the natural type, but it is all made better by collapsing into a foldable beach chair and watching the waves.

You’re not here for easy, though, are you?

There are only so many places left in the world that offer a face-to-face meeting with a real-life god. There is Athens, of course, and Rome, obviously, and there’s even Nashville and Hollywood, but the old gods do not often deem to settle in modern Florida, your personal location of exile. We don’t know where Mount Olympus is, but we surely know it is not in Florida. Myths and demigods and gods themselves are dying things, especially in the swamp of the heartland. But, if you name it after him, he will have no choice but to come and hide amongst mangrove trees, to sip the bitterness from the sea grapes and to suck on the eggs of abandoned turtle hatchlings. 

It is often told that Jupiter was named to be the crown jewel in the Celestial Railroad, the starlit rope of transport that traced the coast from Jupiter to the manifestation of his companion in Juno Beach. This galactic train also stopped at the loading stations of Venus and Mars, but these places have since fallen off the map, lost to time and lost to a parallel universe wherein South Florida is home to a larger chunk of the Solar System. Only Jupiter, the god of pulse and electricity and tension (and the barely populated bit of land named for the sake of giving him a wife) festered in the Florida humidity. What an act of hubris, to name this wild, sandy patch of sawgrass-infested land not only after the planets that light our fair way through dense space, but also after the gods. 

Sometimes, if you look closely, you can see Jupiter winking in the sky like an imposter star. Sometimes, you ask yourself and the gods whether there is another Jupiter on that faraway red planet, a sleepy, happy little beach town being lapped up by waves of red silt and smoke. Where does one Jupiter end, and where does the next Jupiter begin?

As I tell you this, he and his planet reside in sweet Pisces, the final house, a place where he can put his feet up. This is perfect for our purposes. This takes us to our path.

Park far away. You would not like what he can do with the right amount of electrical interference. Walk. Walk far away from park grills and picnic tables and the metal showers used by many a tourist to rinse the sand and salt off their feet. You can deal with a little sand. Walk until the mangroves grow thick and dark, until you can see nary a glimmer of the bright aqua waves obscured by the browning leaves. But you will still see. Walk until you are not sure if what you saw was a silver fin reflecting the sun back into your eyes or just another dimension of the sea. 

Then kneel, until your sunburnt face is parallel to the concrete sidewalk you are sure is even hotter than the sun. Place your palms on the searing ground in some unknown prayer, perhaps to Jupiter. Get a better vantage point, a better keyhole view of the Atlantic until you can see more of that slick silver fin. It is attached to a flipped fish, one which hangs upside down in a mist of sea foam. You will taste the fishiness of the spray as it hits your face. You see its round underbelly and the soft scales of green that line it as its tail flaps up to hit the head of the second fish it is interlocked with. This one is in prime diving position. Notice the flat of its sun dappled head. Notice the essence of Venus transformed, of her train station struck from the map and dappled by stars. Notice the presence of something still very powerful.

This is your path to the Jupiter beach. 

With one outstretched hand, try to hold onto a mangrove branch along the way. It will be grounding in the face of a god who so seldom is. Don’t let the stings of the sand fleas make you lose your grip.

In the other hand, have a scattering of mangrove leaves at the ready. Offer them to him like an olive branch if need be. You may never need them, but in the grove of a god, it is better to be safe than sorry. 

When you step into the shade of the trees, it will feel like the path to the beach is getting longer and longer and deeper and deeper. You will be fine so long as the water is still in sight, distant thought it may be. If you look back, you will see a wall of trunks has closed you off from the road, but it is not advisable to look back. 

Allow yourself to fall down the first ridge of sand. You may attempt to climb it, using the sandy root systems as your steps to the bottom, but we all know how slippery and fragile roots are. They never seem to hold in place when we need them, and there is quite possibly no worse place to lose your footing than in the audience of an old god. 

         Post-sand slide, sat on the ground at the bottom of the ridge of sand, you will see him. He will be turned away from you and shrouded both by a hooded robe the palest of blues and by an alcove of trees. Over centuries, their limbs have come together to form a hollow opening, one that almost looks like a wave itself. At the crest of this arboreal waterfall, you will see the real waves of the ocean cresting and breaking upon each other. But just barely. 

Prepare yourself for the filthy smell of salted sand accompanied by decomposing flora. The sand will be damp at his feet, like someone has dug too far. Was it you?

Call him by his name. “Jupiter.” He loves to hear it. He will turn around and your world will shift. He will shift, and the skies will shift (that is his domain, remember?), and this is the part where I will no longer be of help. There is no telling what form he will appear to you as. The answer to this lies in who you are and whether you chose to meet him. 

There are accounts of day shifting to night, of stars growing closer to Earth and glowing brighter than ever thought possible. There are accounts of Zeus laying a simple knit blanket over the sand and proposing conjugation with you. When you manage to look at him, really look at him, he can appear as any and all genders, depending on your preferences. He can appear as a long-ago lover, a long-lost lover, a long-dead lover, a lover your heart will pine for until it stops beating. Or he can simply appear as a current lover, the lover you thought you left behind when you entered the trees on the beach. It is not my place to tell you what to do with his offer.

There are also accounts of him appearing as an old man, one who is impossibly tall and impossibly built. A man who could topple any tree, any mountain. A man lit up by a backdrop of flashing lightening and howling wind in the vibrant afternoon sun. A man filled with fury. A man you would not like to cross. I hope you are still clutching onto those mangrove leaves.

Or, perhaps, and quietest of all, he won’t turn around. You won’t ever see the form he appeared to you as. He will stay steadfast in his vigil of the waves that hit the sand of Jupiter. He will continue to trace the patterns in the wide expanses of the mangrove trees. And perhaps he will ask you: Why did they name this place after me? Why do I rule this pit of sand? Why do I watch the waves? I once sat in in the sky. 

         The answer you will give him will be your own.