In the Floridian city of St. Augustine there lies great beauty and history. As one of the oldest towns in America there is no denying that it has seen its fair share of history, oddities and folk tales. When my family lived closer to the city, we would often visit to see the fort or go to the outlet mall or take a trip to the beach. Every visit, we brought back home a new tale from the town lore. Since St. Augustine is actually older than the country it’s in the stories that come out of it can seem far-fetched or even outrageous and there is no shortage of them.

One of these stories has really stuck with me since I first heard it some years ago. That is the story of Magnolia Avenue. Anybody who’s taken the trolley tour of St. Augustine knows the story but I’ll relate it here nonetheless. There is a road in town called Magnolia Avenue. This can be confusing for some as it is a bit of a misnomer. There is not a single magnolia tree in sight of the street and it is in fact lined with live oaks.

The story is that many years ago when the road was being built the city planted magnolia trees down the entire road because the Florida climate was perfect for such trees to prosper in and thus the street was officially named Magnolia Avenue. The flowering trees provided beauty for the patrons of Magnolia Avenue and for a time, all was well. Unfortunately, that same year, Florida had one of its coldest recorded winters ever. This was not only bad news for the people of Florida who were not prepared to deal with such conditions but it was also bad news for Magnolia Avenue. Every magnolia tree on that street died. The city was forced to remove them and chose to replace them with live oaks, a sturdier hardwood which could withstand the harsh Florida winters (jokes all around). Those same live oaks still line the street today.

For several years, I’ve kept this story in the back of my mind; thinking about it when I felt the urge to share a fun fact or tell a story or when someone talks about visiting St. Augustine. But recently, this story has gained a deeper metaphorical meaning to me and that is the idea of replacing beauty with strength after and in expectation of difficult times. When we go through a difficult period, our ideas about what is important shift. We no longer see certain things as important and we remove them from our lives. We replace them with something sturdier that can withstand the next thing that comes our way. Or so we think.

Sometimes the thing we lost or removed after a harsh winter was a relationship. We were in that relationship because it looked good for us; we were a cute couple, we gained some sort of satisfaction we thought we wanted, it was otherwise superficially advantageous for us to stay with them. Maybe it was a belief we claimed to hold in order to keep up appearances. We thought that the beauty of it was what was most important. The aesthetic pleasure of it made up for its downfalls in strength. But whatever it was, it couldn’t take the winter that unexpectedly but inevitably came.

Now, like the city of St. Augustine you’re left to remove and replace. Here’s where the hard choice comes in. Do you replace the magnolia trees with more magnolia trees and hope the next winter isn’t as harsh? Or do you take a perceived loss in appearance and plant oak trees?

Here’s something else I learned in St. Augustine. Do you know why live oaks are called live oaks? It’s because they give the appearance of never dying. Where other trees lose all of their leaves in the winter and look dead until springtime, live oaks stay green virtually all year. They do this not by holding onto their leaves all year long but by constantly shedding the dead leaves and growing new, healthy, green leaves in their place.

So perhaps the metaphor is not replacing beauty with strength but shifting our idea of beauty from advantageous or aesthetically pleasing to vitality in the face of hardship. There is a kind of instant gratification and satisfaction when you look upon the beauty of a magnolia tree but, I’ve been to Magnolia Avenue and the grandness that comes with the sight of these ancient oaks inspires a kind of awe that makes you appreciate all of the winters they have gone through. Never for a second do you miss those magnolia trees.