The Everglades

We actually put the air conditioning on a bit on the ride down. 5 below is a faint memory. It is 72 now and a cool breeze pushes through the rv. This is what we came for. The cold and snow forgotten I look out across acres of red pine. 50 foot redish brown sticks with puffs of green on the top. On the floor of the flat flat plain of national park there are short palms, their chris cross compound leaves waving in the wind.

It was a long drive in the giant vehicle. We spent the night near Tampa, night before last and saw the Tampa Aquarium and then across the city to Clearwater. A state park called Honey Moon Beach. There Dusty found, I think, the only dog beach in Florida and discovered salt water. This dog, who hates water, jumped and barked at the breakers and ran into the sea and swam. It felt like we had finally started the vacation. Up until now it was, “Driving is my Life.”                                                                                           

The drive across Alligator Alley, (the road through the Everglades from Miami to Ft Meyer ) was wonderful. The strip malls gone, civilization shrunk to its minimum, we drove across tens of miles of wilderness. Looking across the grassy plain, it looks what I would expect Africa to look. Except the trees off in the distance are palms. There is a channel of water following the road. Trees line the opposite side. There are hundreds of tall birds in the water and on the banks. Small white, large white, brown, black, blue, short neck, long neck, curvy neck, short beak, long beak, really really long beak.

Off in the distance I see a flock of smaller birds. They create a giant cloud in the sky. High in the low clouds thousands and thousands of birds wheel around, creating fantastic shapes.  We approach as the bird cloud floats lower. Lower and lower and “my god they are going to hit us”. The cloud rises, but not before leaving a dozen dead birds in our grill and windshield wipers.

I see two dead gators by the side of the road, a group of large black vultures stands next to one, waiting as if for the early bird special to begin.

At a roadside attraction I hold a small alligator and we see birds and snakes of all sizes and colors. The gator looks blankly in my eyes and I get very little consciousness.

Now we sit, our destination arrived and there is an inner silence that is compounded by the deep silence that this pristine wilderness conjures.