Watching for the round gray backs

There's a whole category of Sarasota afternoon that consists of standing at a railing over some piece of water, doing nothing, waiting to see whether a manatee comes by.

It is a terrible use of time and I recommend it without reservation.

They turn up in the canals and around the bay, especially as the water starts to let go of its heat, and they are — there's no dignified way to put this — deeply unbothered. A manatee moves like somebody who has never once been late for anything. It surfaces, takes a breath you can hear from thirty feet off, and goes back to whatever slow business it's conducting down there. No hurry. No opinion about you.

Visitors get excited and start filming. Locals point without saying anything, which is the correct protocol.

I think what I like is that they're a rebuke to the pace of everything else. You cannot rush a manatee. You cannot make a manatee more productive. It has worked out something the rest of us are still struggling with.

If you're down here and you want one piece of advice that isn't about a restaurant: find a railing over calm water near sunset, put the phone away, and give it fifteen minutes.

Maybe nothing happens. That's fine too. That's most of the point.