Everglades National Park
Everglades National Park and Big Cypress
“A River runs through it” is about Montana. The Everglades National Park in Florida is a river. Big Cypress National Preserve, located on the edge of the Everglades is inundated. Fresh water is lighter than sea water, and floats across the south of Florida into the sea. It is a flat land with minor differences of a few feet allowing for niche environments to exist, from cypress to mangroves, blue gills and gars, and alligators to panthers. It is an ecosystem held together by the underlying layer of carbonates and oolitic seabed.
The park has glades of panoramic landscape, crisscrossed by dense lines of trees, and surrounded by a mangrove fringe. You can smell it, feel the heat, and literally submerge yourself in it. There are no hills or high points other than the manmade walkways and towers. It is as if you are immersed in the roots, making it hard to try and capture the essence of scale or even detail. Flying in over the park’s boundaries you can get an aerial view of the water through the clouds, but even then, it just a glimpse.
On the ground, biking along shark valley you get a sense of the water around you. Motoring in the maze of the mangroves, it was always water that connected you. It invoked a sense of stillness, rooted by the sawgrass, mangroves and marshes.
All around you there is vibrancy, both of colors and the sounds of birdlife. Without even looking for the rare species they are everywhere. American White Ibis, Anhinga, Black-Crowned Heron, Cormorant, Great Egret, Green Heron, Hawk, Ibis, Osprey, Pied-billed Grebe, Red Shouldered Hawk, Seagulls, Turkey Vultures can be seen flying, swimming, perched or nesting. And underneath, Alligator Gar, Alligator mississippiensis, bass, and bluegill are seen swimming with a Spiny Softshelled turtle. All finding their place in the dense landscape.
Where the land dips a few feet below sea level, the gulf invades, leaving the mangroves to hold the land together. Cruising out to see the sunset accompanied by cavorting dolphins, only in your imagination can you picture the ten thousand islands that surround you. They are but a sliver of green caught between the blue of ocean and sky.
Note: Inside and inherited by the national park, human intervention, with its own story of cold war era nuclear defense lies the Nike Missile base, abandoned by changing politics, and preserved to remind us of human’s role inside this incredible water of the everglades.
Read More“A River runs through it” is about Montana. The Everglades National Park in Florida is a river. Big Cypress National Preserve, located on the edge of the Everglades is inundated. Fresh water is lighter than sea water, and floats across the south of Florida into the sea. It is a flat land with minor differences of a few feet allowing for niche environments to exist, from cypress to mangroves, blue gills and gars, and alligators to panthers. It is an ecosystem held together by the underlying layer of carbonates and oolitic seabed.
The park has glades of panoramic landscape, crisscrossed by dense lines of trees, and surrounded by a mangrove fringe. You can smell it, feel the heat, and literally submerge yourself in it. There are no hills or high points other than the manmade walkways and towers. It is as if you are immersed in the roots, making it hard to try and capture the essence of scale or even detail. Flying in over the park’s boundaries you can get an aerial view of the water through the clouds, but even then, it just a glimpse.
On the ground, biking along shark valley you get a sense of the water around you. Motoring in the maze of the mangroves, it was always water that connected you. It invoked a sense of stillness, rooted by the sawgrass, mangroves and marshes.
All around you there is vibrancy, both of colors and the sounds of birdlife. Without even looking for the rare species they are everywhere. American White Ibis, Anhinga, Black-Crowned Heron, Cormorant, Great Egret, Green Heron, Hawk, Ibis, Osprey, Pied-billed Grebe, Red Shouldered Hawk, Seagulls, Turkey Vultures can be seen flying, swimming, perched or nesting. And underneath, Alligator Gar, Alligator mississippiensis, bass, and bluegill are seen swimming with a Spiny Softshelled turtle. All finding their place in the dense landscape.
Where the land dips a few feet below sea level, the gulf invades, leaving the mangroves to hold the land together. Cruising out to see the sunset accompanied by cavorting dolphins, only in your imagination can you picture the ten thousand islands that surround you. They are but a sliver of green caught between the blue of ocean and sky.
Note: Inside and inherited by the national park, human intervention, with its own story of cold war era nuclear defense lies the Nike Missile base, abandoned by changing politics, and preserved to remind us of human’s role inside this incredible water of the everglades.
