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GARRETT THEROLFSome Aripekans say a 235-home development threatens the isolation that has sustained them and the bears living nearby.
ARIPEKA - This village and the Florida black bear have lived together for more than a century, both finding an unusual refuge in this corner of sabal palm hammocks at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico's steel-gray waters.
For both, the isolation from population centers to the south has been a life source. The bear needs wide, untouched stretches to feed and mate, and the people here seek isolation themselves.
No one, however, believes this partnership will last forever. There are bigger, long-term threats.
Incursions from homes and business have narrowed the bears' habitat to the point where their numbers now dip below two dozen. And the isolation is now threatened in Aripeka as well.
On a recent day, Mac Davis steered his SUV to the site where these forces collide.
Chugging softly, he gently intruded on the pelicans that slip like hang gliders overhead, pushing past the trees that hide the truants' favorite swimming pond.
He pulled his foot off the gas at the edge of 210 acres where developers plan a 235-house development and a much-narrowed passageway for the bears to traverse their habitat here in the northwest corner of Pasco County up to southern Citrus County.
"It won't be wide enough," said Davis, a member of the Gulf Coast Conservancy, a nonprofit led by Aripekans.
And for many Aripekans, the development would be too close as well.
In a single vote earlier this month, county commissioners made the zoning changes necessary for the 235 homes, effectively doubling the size of Aripeka if they are constructed.
"They've been discovered up there," said Ann Hildebrand, the senior member of the Pasco County Commission who said she joined her colleagues in allowing the development with "great regret."
Here, many people liked being forgotten.
James Rosenquist, more famous for his dinner parties in Aripeka than as a pioneer of the pop art movement, has done most of his work here for decades. Often reclusive, he told the Times in 2000, "I think people are surprised that ideas come out of Aripeka, Florida. ... I like it because I don't really have any interference."
"No trespassing" and "private road" signs are more visible than people.
Meridy Mendoza, who is 30 and the operator of a beauty shop, one of the village's two commercial enterprises, said, "You put your boats in your yard without anyone snipping at everybody. You move here to be hidden away."
She is a fourth-generation Aripekan and worries that the newcomers "may not approve of how we live."
As family histories spin out over decades, peculiarities from the past still echo in conversation.
"Well, we don't so much have a family tree as a family bush," said Carol White, who is 59 with a warm personality and is the youngest of seven third-generation siblings living along the wide-open gulf and needlerush marshes. "My grandmother and grandfather were first cousins."
Her brother, Carl Norfleet, opposes new development out of concern for the loss of wilderness. The proprietor of Norfleet Fish Camp grocery and bait market and sometimes called the honorary mayor, Norfleet walks more than 1,000 miles through the land every year.
The arrival of new homes will test the boundaries of a lesson he said his father taught him decades ago.
"When I was a kid I would complain about all the Yankees coming in on U.S. 19, but my dad taught me they're just people," Norfleet said.
For White, the new development doesn't bother her at all, placing her in the substantial minority.
"Hopefully this will mean more people for church. Not many Aripekans come to church, shame on them!"
A fourth-generation Aripekan, 44-year-old Steve Sloan Jr. is a former surveyor and hopes the development will come and bring jobs with health care. A population large enough to sustain an elementary school and public bus route also is needed, he said.
"I think it's actually a little selfish to be opposed to the development," he said.
The people, of course, will carry on. It's the bears who are fragile.
No more than two dozen roam over the skinny stretch of coastland that's left of their habitat.
Conservationists and government agencies have attempted to create a pathway of preservations for them to hopscotch with the least amount of human contact.
Due to the burgeoning traffic on the roadways in between, several crucial bear deaths have occurred in recent years and the population is believed to be severely imperiled.
Conservationists, such as Davis, believe the development will be a choke point. Although a substantial amount of the development site will be reserved for a bear corridor, Davis and others say the narrowest point of 600 feet is insufficient for the skittish animals.
The Southwest Florida Water Management District land resource director, Fritz Musselmann, cast doubt on the corridor's suitability for bears, saying "it should be sufficient for small animals."
Attorney Joel Tew, representing the developer, Steve Thompson of Dunedin, did not return recent calls for comment.
The water agency continues trying to buy the property, but has not made progress.
Meanwhile, Davis, as a member of the Gulf Coast Conservancy, has had success helping to steer sites out of developers' hands and into preservation.
He vows to continue.
Garrett Therolf covers Pasco County government. He can be reached in west Pasco at 727 869-6232 or at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6232. His e-mail address is gtherolf@sptimes.com