Musings on an Attitude
Florida has been a state of little interest to me over the years. Hot and humid in the summer months, snowbirds descending from northern climes in the winter. Crowded beaches lining the coastlines. Seasonal hurricanes. Conservative politics at odds with my Vermont liberalism.
I also embody the knowing that every place has its history, its natural beauty, and interesting people. Be open, I’ve told myself before in other places. Like Oklahoma being flat. But, really, in the panhandle of that state is a mountain with elevation. Oil history and odd characters seeking the self-made American dream.
I like lists. I like checking them off, gaining experiences by doing so. Like my New England Hundred Highest peak hiking list. The list took me decades to complete, and brought me to a variety of beautiful vistas, and personal growth by hiking those trails to the summits. Some involved bushwacking, forcing me to learn and re-learn compass use skills. I can read a topo map and understand my terrain, but take the trail system out of the mix, and now we’re talking possible life and death if I get lost in the wilderness. Now, when back home in New England, I’m picking off the New Hampshire 52 with a View list. Less elevation, maybe low-use trails, but a spectacular vista every time!
Another list I am picking away at is the National Parks of the United States. I realize that some might not ever happen, or I won’t want to spend the money to get to them. Some in Alaska, for instance, would involve paying for a plane and drop off. BUT….it sure is fun to get to and explore the ones I can. And so, avoiding Florida means avoiding the Everglades. Especially now with climate change and rising ocean water.
The vision of visiting the Florida panhandle propels us towards the most southern parts of the state.
Florida has been a state of little interest to me over the years. Hot and humid in the summer months, snowbirds descending from northern climes in the winter. Crowded beaches lining the coastlines. Seasonal hurricanes. Conservative politics at odds with my Vermont liberalism.
I also embody the knowing that every place has its history, its natural beauty, and interesting people. Be open, I’ve told myself before in other places. Like Oklahoma being flat. But, really, in the panhandle of that state is a mountain with elevation. Oil history and odd characters seeking the self-made American dream.
I like lists. I like checking them off, gaining experiences by doing so. Like my New England Hundred Highest peak hiking list. The list took me decades to complete, and brought me to a variety of beautiful vistas, and personal growth by hiking those trails to the summits. Some involved bushwacking, forcing me to learn and re-learn compass use skills. I can read a topo map and understand my terrain, but take the trail system out of the mix, and now we’re talking possible life and death if I get lost in the wilderness. Now, when back home in New England, I’m picking off the New Hampshire 52 with a View list. Less elevation, maybe low-use trails, but a spectacular vista every time!
Another list I am picking away at is the National Parks of the United States. I realize that some might not ever happen, or I won’t want to spend the money to get to them. Some in Alaska, for instance, would involve paying for a plane and drop off. BUT….it sure is fun to get to and explore the ones I can. And so, avoiding Florida means avoiding the Everglades. Especially now with climate change and rising ocean water.
The vision of visiting the Florida panhandle propels us towards the most southern parts of the state.
The Royal Palms
Somewhere around 1914, a group of wealthy women, looking for a cause for their Women’s Federation Club, coerced their influential husbands into saving a group of Royal Palm trees from harvesting. Magnificent in their height and beauty, these trees came to represent all that is good, and not good, in the human race.
Man’s push for commerce, industry, and profit over-rode the balance of nature’s environmentally protective layering system here in South Florida: dredging and draining of the swamp-lands and mangroves for land development, and damming of the ecosystem for better irrigation of farmlands farther north. Birds and alligators harvested for fashion accessories. Over-fishing.
Where does one go when all seems caught in the palm, squashed, bloody guts squirting through taut and fisted fingers? What does it take for one to open the fist and really look at the carnage? Or does our species have too much history of turning the fist down to release the aftermath, wiping the palm clean as if death never happened?
As I snap photos of these Royal palms, standing tall in small groupings, I try to imagine these women of south Florida in awe of a grove of around a hundred palms in line for felling. These women prying open the bloody palms of developers. Groveling with whatever leverage they could find. Enough is enough. They wanted to know where the line was between the survival of dignity and exploitation of what was not yet understood in the ecological big picture. Bravo, women! Bravo for popping the vivid colors and textures out of the swampy, murky, mangrove-filled glades, putting down the photo-shop edits, and shape-shifting some boundaried edges into a new vision, a new conviction.
The coerced husbands, railroad barons and legislators, finally succumbed to their wives demands, and starting with the Royal Palms (made into a state park in 1916), then eventually with more donated acreage now known as Big Cypress National Preserve, the precious water systems of the glades became Everglades National Park in 1934. The largest sub-tropical wilderness in the United States, the area expands from Florida and Biscayne Bays, to Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimee River.
The combined acreage has also become an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site, and a Wetland of International Importance encompassing marine and estuary waters and freshwater marsh.
Within the mosaic of marshes and sawgrass prairies and pine rocklands, jungle-thick hardwood “hammocks” dot the ecosystem, providing extra protection for panthers, birds of all kinds, snakes, all living the good life in what is known as “the river of grass”.
Walking the boardwalk through the Mahogany Hammock along the major land-road through the Park on a misty, rainy day, I duck under girthy tree limbs resting their weight onto the boardwalk railings, watch for snakes hanging from branches, and listen to the melodies of songbirds high up in the dense brush.
With an elevation of between zero and eight feet, these hammocks are a testament to survival. Ferns, lichens, cabbage palms, saw palmetto, tamarind, oak and mahogany thrive, protected around their circumference by moats, sloughs and the marshes themselves. An oasis from the elements themselves. As egrets claw their way through the marshes in search of food, their white starkness, ever-primal, celebrates those initial efforts of a small group of wealthy women looking for a cause.
Somewhere around 1914, a group of wealthy women, looking for a cause for their Women’s Federation Club, coerced their influential husbands into saving a group of Royal Palm trees from harvesting. Magnificent in their height and beauty, these trees came to represent all that is good, and not good, in the human race.
Man’s push for commerce, industry, and profit over-rode the balance of nature’s environmentally protective layering system here in South Florida: dredging and draining of the swamp-lands and mangroves for land development, and damming of the ecosystem for better irrigation of farmlands farther north. Birds and alligators harvested for fashion accessories. Over-fishing.
Where does one go when all seems caught in the palm, squashed, bloody guts squirting through taut and fisted fingers? What does it take for one to open the fist and really look at the carnage? Or does our species have too much history of turning the fist down to release the aftermath, wiping the palm clean as if death never happened?
As I snap photos of these Royal palms, standing tall in small groupings, I try to imagine these women of south Florida in awe of a grove of around a hundred palms in line for felling. These women prying open the bloody palms of developers. Groveling with whatever leverage they could find. Enough is enough. They wanted to know where the line was between the survival of dignity and exploitation of what was not yet understood in the ecological big picture. Bravo, women! Bravo for popping the vivid colors and textures out of the swampy, murky, mangrove-filled glades, putting down the photo-shop edits, and shape-shifting some boundaried edges into a new vision, a new conviction.
The coerced husbands, railroad barons and legislators, finally succumbed to their wives demands, and starting with the Royal Palms (made into a state park in 1916), then eventually with more donated acreage now known as Big Cypress National Preserve, the precious water systems of the glades became Everglades National Park in 1934. The largest sub-tropical wilderness in the United States, the area expands from Florida and Biscayne Bays, to Lake Okeechobee and the Kissimee River.
The combined acreage has also become an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site, and a Wetland of International Importance encompassing marine and estuary waters and freshwater marsh.
Within the mosaic of marshes and sawgrass prairies and pine rocklands, jungle-thick hardwood “hammocks” dot the ecosystem, providing extra protection for panthers, birds of all kinds, snakes, all living the good life in what is known as “the river of grass”.
Walking the boardwalk through the Mahogany Hammock along the major land-road through the Park on a misty, rainy day, I duck under girthy tree limbs resting their weight onto the boardwalk railings, watch for snakes hanging from branches, and listen to the melodies of songbirds high up in the dense brush.
With an elevation of between zero and eight feet, these hammocks are a testament to survival. Ferns, lichens, cabbage palms, saw palmetto, tamarind, oak and mahogany thrive, protected around their circumference by moats, sloughs and the marshes themselves. An oasis from the elements themselves. As egrets claw their way through the marshes in search of food, their white starkness, ever-primal, celebrates those initial efforts of a small group of wealthy women looking for a cause.
Everglades National Park interior:
Bleached Reefs
I once wrote in a poem, “I lay down my spine against igneous stone, to bond rock to bone…”
It is how I feel the ground below me…the foundation of this planet in what I want to believe is its solidity, its adaptability, its transformative healing of all that happens to it, and for all that live on and in it. Naive, yes I know. It is the only compass I have for trekking through the density of my heart’s jungle: the dangers, the grief, the hope, the courage to eke out any gasp possible…saying, “I am still here, and I will give all of me”.
But I also find my place in the fluidity of the planet’s emotions…but the waters are warming, shifting, and what has been might never be again. And I too, gasp.
With my flippers pulled onto my feet, my wet suit shielding me from the wind chopping the sea waters near the boat, my slightly inflated vest buoying my floating body, I pull down my face mask and snorkel and paddle my way over to the coral reef trying to survive in the warming waters of the Atlantic Ocean’s Florida Straights.
We are losing these reefs, and the time to see them, even struggling, seems important, and worth the cost of the boat trip out into John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo in the Florida Keys.
Floating above the reef, my heart both saddens at the reef state of being, and admires the gasps offered from the reef itself…the courage to put out another sea fan, offering a haven for whatever fish and organisms can still survive.
May our individual hearts keep finding that kind of courage and determination for survival….with every gasping breath.
I once wrote in a poem, “I lay down my spine against igneous stone, to bond rock to bone…”
It is how I feel the ground below me…the foundation of this planet in what I want to believe is its solidity, its adaptability, its transformative healing of all that happens to it, and for all that live on and in it. Naive, yes I know. It is the only compass I have for trekking through the density of my heart’s jungle: the dangers, the grief, the hope, the courage to eke out any gasp possible…saying, “I am still here, and I will give all of me”.
But I also find my place in the fluidity of the planet’s emotions…but the waters are warming, shifting, and what has been might never be again. And I too, gasp.
With my flippers pulled onto my feet, my wet suit shielding me from the wind chopping the sea waters near the boat, my slightly inflated vest buoying my floating body, I pull down my face mask and snorkel and paddle my way over to the coral reef trying to survive in the warming waters of the Atlantic Ocean’s Florida Straights.
We are losing these reefs, and the time to see them, even struggling, seems important, and worth the cost of the boat trip out into John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo in the Florida Keys.
Floating above the reef, my heart both saddens at the reef state of being, and admires the gasps offered from the reef itself…the courage to put out another sea fan, offering a haven for whatever fish and organisms can still survive.
May our individual hearts keep finding that kind of courage and determination for survival….with every gasping breath.