What makes Canaveral National Seashore so revered in Florida is that visitors can commune with the wildest nature, some two-dozen miles of Atlantic surf rolling onto beaches never reconstructed, far from T-shirt shops and conjuring a sense of before European conquest.
A surprise and decisive beating by Hurricane Nicole in November has altered how visitors, 2.2 million last year, will experience Canaveral’s nature and has set the stage for more disruption to the longest wilderness coast along Florida’s Atlantic coast.
Today, nearly a half-century into its existence, the national seashore is at an existential crossroads. The Category 1 Nicole did something more damaging than fling debris of costly boardwalks and bury parking lots under uncalculated tons of sand.
