Exploring the Everglades

It's been ten years and one month since I spent time in the Everglades (unless you count driving on Alligator Alley). You might wonder how I can remember when I last visited with such clarity. The aswer is easy -- there's a blog for that! Yes, I've been at this writing thing for a long time. Somewhat surprisingly there weren't any repeat activities from my earlier adventure. The Everglades is a big place. 

Oscar and I started off with a kayak trip on the Turner River Paddling Trail in Ochopee. I was a little surprised when he said he'd booked a double kayak. I'm all for time together, but it could have been dicey. Fortunately, I've kayaked enough to feel comfortable with a paddle in my hands. The fact that we've had so little rain also worked in my favor. The water level was a full five inches lower than usual. So, had worse come to worst, we could have gotten out and walked and only gotten our calves wet. It also meant that I could literally dig in to move us forward on the very rare occasions I got us a bit, well, stuck. 

There was only one other couple on the trip, so it was easy to stay close to our guide. He shared all kinds of interesting information with us about our environment (which I immediately forgot as soon as we were on terra firma). What did stick with me was the number of gators in those waters. Just one look at this guy's smile tells you how friendly he was. Then again, he might have been smiling because he was contemplating how happy his next meal was going to make him... 

Here's a fun fact about gators that I hope I'll never experience firsthand. They're fast! They can swim up to 20 mph when they really need to get somewhere (like to a person who's fallen out of her kayak). Okay, that's speedy but not totally mindboggling. They are, after all, water animals. What seems crazy is that they can run up to 15 mph on their stubby little legs. Sure, they might only be able to move at that speed for about 30 feet, but I wouldn't want to test that limit. 

Kayaking of course isn't the only activity you can engage in in the Everglades. We also visited Fakahatchee Strand Preserve and walked the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk. The walkway took us from a very nice Visitors' Center (indoor plumbing!) to a gator hole where we watched an anhinga valiantly try to swallow a fish. Periodically he would take a break and smash his prey on the ground. I don't know if this was out of frustration or to confirm that his lunch was dead. In any event, eating his prey wasn't a skill he had yet mastered, and after about ten minutes we left him to it. I listened for a cheer from the other onlookers when the bird finally got his meal to no avail. 

My favorite tree hands down was what I dubbed the hugging tree. Oscar called it the "Alien" tree, which turned out to be more accurate. My Google search for the "crazy looking tree on the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk" revealed that the tree is a strangler fig and is often referred to as "The Claw." Strangler figs, as you may know, got their name because the fig tree grows from the top down, wrapping itself around its host (in this case a cypress tree) until it eventually suffocates it. Nature can be brutal. 

And now for some art. (You knew it was coming.) No trip to the area is complete without a visit to Clyde Butcher's studio. The exterior display was a bit less impactful than it might have been because Historic Spanish Point hosted an outdoor exhibit of Butcher's work a couple of years back. Still, the works were striking. It was fun to see the sites Butcher chose to post on the markers, from "Gators 346 meters" to "Ocala National Forest 329 miles" to "Amazon 2383 miles." 

In case you're wondering, the photograph is a closeup of St. Vincent Island Driftwood. The most likely spot to find the gnarled wood is St. Vincent Island, a National Wildlife Refuge on a barrier island near Apalachicola. The island's shores are often referred to as a "Boneyard Beach" because of the bleached color of the driftwood. I'd like to visit sometime. 

Butcher's studio features his large format black and white photographs. They are gorgeous, but I'd seen many of them before in various exhibits. So what I particularly enjoyed was the timeline -- complete with photographs of course -- of Butcher's life. 

Butcher got his first camera when he was just eight years old. His family enjoyed visiting national parks, and he got his start shooting the great outdoors there. Despite his fascination with photography, Butcher decided to pursue architecture as his career. It was just more practical. He combined the two fields in his senior thesis on the use of photography in the creation of architectural design. His resume as an architect includes working on the plans for the Transamerica Building in San Francisco. It wasn't until Butcher was in his 40s that he visited Big Cypress National Preserve with his camera in hand. The rest, as they say, is history. 

With that, our adventure in the Everglades came to an end. I highly recommend the area if you're interested in getting up close and personal with nature. Let me know if you're heading there for a swamp walk. It's an outing that's still on my bucket list.