A vivid rendering of Poulenc’s Sonata for Flute and Piano at Elizabeth Hall, the coloring of sheep’s wool with palmetto berries followed by a dinner of rice perloo at the Pioneer Settlement for the Creative Arts and the whistling down of a scrub jay to perch atop your head at Lyonia Preserve all suggest the diversity of culture and nature that co-exists in West Volusia.

Big measures abound.

*Stetson University was the first private upper-level Florida school with a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious undergraduate honors organization, and the first to enroll African-American students.

*DeLand in 1985 was the first Florida-designated Main Street city in the national program that revitalizes downtown community.

*The St. Johns River was the river road that opened up the settlement of central Florida after the Civil War and remains home to significant wildlife communities, including manatees in winter. A conservation corridor ensures habitat for black bear and, some say, panther.

Yet, while Stetson may center cultural life and the St. Johns chiefly influences regional ecology, West Volusia is also a realm of small “c" culture that ranges from shopkeeping to horse ranching and of nature lived daily as part of the good life.

Shopkeepers along two-lane Woodland Boulevard through downtown DeLand offer tea to thirsty customers, ice cream samples and places to sit to watch the passing parade. Who can resist in this downtown that feels as congenial alongside its residential neighborhoods as when Henry DeLand laid it out 125 years ago?

Gus Gibbs at Gibbs for Men, the oldest men’s specialty shop in central Florida still fusses over visitors like he has since 1978. A fellow with an evening dinner date at Victoria & Albert’s comes in and asks Gus if he has a suit bag that he can put his dress-up duds in. Gus gives him one with the store name on it.

The big schmooze at the Muse Book Shop (where Beethoven on disk accompanies an impressive antiquarian stock) was lately about local politics, once scandalously compared to Chicago in the out-of-print Flamingo Road (made into a 1949 movie starring Joan Crawford).

At DeLand Discount Music you might add “animal circuit" to your hip vocabulary, a reference to gig sites open to journeymen performers who play Elk, Moose and Eagle clubs when not behind the counter. Florida Victorian features regional musicians at its bar inside a warehouse of architectural antiques.

At Florida Art Gallery, it’s pop surrealism with far-out work by Dr. Seuss and a photo of Salvador Dali and Walt Disney together during a time when the surrealist crown prince worked on a sequel to Fantasia never produced.

If natural pride of West Volusia place goes to the St. Johns River, the region also boasts recreational springs, scenic roads, museums and one-of-a-kind attractions.

West Volusia is a hub of equestrian culture. It’s home to some 15,000 horses.

Lake Helen, with only 3,000 residents, is site of the region’s largest equestrian center and of an annual Equifest that, in a special coupling, celebrates everything equine outdoors in connection with an equine art exhibition at the DeLand Museum of Art. DeLeon Springs is home to one of America’s foremost schools of dressage.

Barberville is home to a master instructor in belly dancing (who also teaches men).

Regional museums showcase more than art alone.

The U.S. Postal Museum in Orange City preserves postal history and artifacts in a recreated post office from the 1940s inside the 1876 Heritage Inn. Programs at the African American Museum of the Arts in the Spring Hill section of DeLand help shape contemporary African-American culture.

The Gillespie Museum of Minerals on the Stetson campus houses the second largest collection of its kind after the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard.

The Gillespie also houses a collection of more than 70 different varieties of native plants used to instruct about gardening without excess water and pesticide use. Fuller instructional programs about native Florida landscaping take place at the Volusia County Agricultural Center just off I-4 near DeLand.

Ultimately, West Volusia remains a region of traditional communities, some upscale and laid out along tailored streets, others (not necessarily less upscale) still centered around dirt roads where folks raise horses and peacocks roam.

Blue Spring, Gemini Spring, DeLeon Spring may all be famous attractions but they’re part of backyard living to folks in Orange City, DeBary and Glenwood.

People still farm this part of the county, raising everything from dairy herds to wildflower seeds. They operate fish camps on the river that flows so impressively through Florida history. They favor country restaurants down roads to historic landings and railroad stations that still serve passengers.

Maybe Spandex-colorful cyclists on titanium bikes say the most about this West Volusia region when they hit the brakes at their favorite restaurant in an old spring-side sugar mill.

It’s the balance between what was and what is that leaves West Volusia the treasured place it remains.