Everglades

Growing up in Naples, Florida the everglades is something we all know about. It borders are town which is now pretty much a city to the east.  I remember being a kid in Naples, and thinking where I now live was out in the “sticks”. Though now I think I am close enough to everything. The town has grown so much since I was a kid, probably too much.  I remember going 4 wheeling on a dirt trail which is now Livingston road and runs through the center of the current area urbanized part of Naples.  It used to seem like there was wilderness everywhere, and now the only thing left is the everglades and a few spots between.  I call my home paradise lost, because to me it doesn’t have the same appeal it did when I came here as a kid.  Though the people that never saw it back then keep piling in and looking for more paradise to claim.  Eventually money overcomes everything it seems. Luckily for what’s left of the everglades money is being set to restore and preserve it.

This post is supposed to be about Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s The Nature of the Everglades.  Well I don’t really have a lot to comment on her writing. It was a beautifully worded writing, but easy to get lost if you not into that type of writing.   I think it would maybe have more of impact if I didn’t grow up right outside the everglades. You have to get out there and not read about it.  Even today I spend a lot of time running the dirt trails around the Picayune strand and dry areas surrounding the everglades. If I am lucky, ill get a seat with a friend with airboat and actually get out in the glades.  I love it out there, not a building in sight and usually you only see the people your with.  

We know very well about the “muddy water holes about the pine land the brown-black water moccasin’s slide there wet ridged scales” (Douglas p138). Things she says like rainy season finds a terrible climax in September or October, in the crashing impact of a hurricane (Douglas p118).  That’s part of living in south Florida, typically we celebrate before hurricanes arrive in south Florida.  She makes mention to the sky’s as summer changes to fall and winter. Saying often at all toward the zenith, which has lost its summer intensity of violet and burns now with the bright crisp blue of northern autumns (Douglas p119).  Although the skies are a tourist attraction, we locals still like to watch the sun fall. Most people go to the beach, it’s really cool if you take a dirt road out towards the glades.