RETURN TO THE EVERGLADES


  (PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN FLORIDA LIVING MAGAZINE)

Not to worry. During the day, you are likely to see a dizzying array of wild animals as well as some of the most unique and spectacular plant life in Florida or anywhere else.

My own introduction to the Fakahatchee Strand came on a slow drive along the ten-mile W.J. Jane Memorial Scenic Drive. The road begins at the rustic village of Copeland and passes through the heart of the state preserve.

That morning I was following a van on the smooth dirt road. The farther we went, the more the trees seemed to close in overhead until we were finally driving through a jungle canopy with water on both sides of the road. Shafts of sunlight streaming through the trees played tricks with my eyes, and it dawned on me that I was driving through a swamp --an eerie realization that made me feel suddenly grateful for the fellow traveler up ahead.

Then, without warning, the van swerved dangerously from from one side of the road to the other, and kept on going. I saw something in the road and stopped the car.

It was a dark-colored snake three or four feet long. I thought the van had run over it and possibly killed it. But just to be on the safe side, I broke a branch from a bush and poked the motionless snake with it. A black tongue darted out of his mouth. When I poked him a second time, the snake came alive and slithered off the road so fast I couldn't believe my eyes. He seemed to flatten his body against a tree trunk, camoflauging himself So perfectly he was almost impossible to see.

I decided to leave the snake alone, feeling a little guilty that I had bothered him in the first place. I might have saved his life by chasing him off the road. Or so I told myself, the way people do when they try to justify interfering with Mother Nature.

Fakahatchee means "dark water" in the language of the native people who inhabited this area long before Ponce de Leon arrived. Strand is the geographical term for a densely-vegetated swamp that is narrow and elongated. Fakahatchee Strand is three to five miles wide and 20 miles long, stretching from the Ten Thousand Islands north to beyond Interstate 75 (more endearingly referred to as Alligator Alley.)

One reason why hunting is not permitted in the Strand proper is the presence of a rare and beautiful animal that has dominated public policy here in recent years --the Florida panther. The last species of big cat remaining in the eastern United States, the Florida panther has been reduced to a dangerously small breeding population of 30 to 50 in the wild, and many of these survivors are believed to live in the Fakahatchee Strand and nearby areas.

In the 1980s private land just north of Fakahatchee Strand was scheduled for development as rural housing tracts to accommodate the burgeoning human population of Collier County, one of the fastest growing areas in the nation. The development plans were set aside when the federal government established the 30,000-acre Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. After one of the cats was struck and killed by a car on 1-75, underpasses were installed and tall fences erected along the highway.

These costly efforts appear to be working, but there are other problems confronting this part of the Everglades. Wildfires occur on a regular basis in the Fakahatchee area and they are especially dangerous in the winter dry season. Some are caused by lightning
strikes, but many fires are deliberately set by hunters in order to attract game later to the new growth in blackened areas. State personnel man a fire-watch tower adjacent to the reserve headquarters.

Besides the Florida panther, other endangered or threatened animal species make their home in Fakahatchee Strand: the Florida black bear, the Everglades mink, the wood stork, and the mangrove fox squirrel. More common are racoon, possum, deer, wild hog and otter.

Of the many kinds of birds, the most graceful are the egrets and other tall wading birds which can be seen stalking every patch of water with a minnow in it. Hawks and bald eagles, circling overhead, are also a common sight. I got close enough to almost touch some black-headed vultures who were sunning themselves on the ground.

And as I learned, snakes feel very much at home in the enviroment of a swamp. Fortunately for us human interlopers, the vast majority of snakes in the Fakahatchee Strand are non-poisonous. The cotton-mouth water moccasin is the most noteable exception: a short, fat, dark-colored reptile whose description fit the snake I saw on the road.

Park Ranger Jolen Mayberry, who had lived in the area for 15 years, claimed it only takes common sense to avoid being bitten by a snake in the Everglades.

"When you go hiking," she said, "you don't look up at the trees. You look down where you're walking. The only way you'll get bit is if you step on a snake or try to pick it up."
To prove her point, she rummaged through the medical supplies at the reserve headquarters and couldn't find a snake-bite kit.

"We used to have one, but they don't do any good anyway," she said. "All you have to do is stay calm to prevent going into shock and get to a hospital as soon as possible. They have anti-venom."

A few miles west of the Copeland turnoff on U.S. 41 is the reserve's Big Cypress Bend, which has a 2,000-foot boardwalk. This takes you into the soul of the swamp, so to speak --the only part that was spared from logging activities back in the old days when cypress trees were cut to make pickel barrels and ballpark seats and decks for sailing ships. Indeed, the old-growth cypress trees in this part of Florida are the oldest trees east of the Mississi River, dating back 500 to 600 years.

Having learned the hard way about Florida's "state bird" (the mosquito), I sprayed insect repellent on my bare legs before setting out on the foot path. I had heard there were alligators to be seen at the end of the boardwalk and an otter who had managed to survive among all those snapping jaws.

The lady park ranger had warned me that the view from the boardwalk might be somewhat obscured due to damage caused by recent hurricanes, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself walking through  what I have always heard described as a cathedral forest. Cathedral meaning church-like or religious in aspect. The few uprooted tree and broken branches only added to my sense of being in a place where nature had run its full course --the truest definition of a wilderness. In Big Cyress Bend, surrounded by a fusion of color and shade, it was easy for me to forget the sad joke about Florida's other "state bird," the construction crane.

At the end of the boardwalk a middle-aged man sat on the bench holding a pair of binoculars. It was so quiet and the scene so idyllic I hesitated to speak for fear of breaking the spell of enchantment.

"The alligators are over there," the man said matter-of-factly, pointing off the end of the boardwalk.

As quietly as I could, I walked to the railing and saw three baby alligators sunning themselves on a log in the water not ten feet away. They didn't even blink to acknowledge my gawking.

"There was a big one over there," the man said, pointing across the pond, "but he submerged when he heard you coming."

Oops! Now I really felt like I was trespassing on a very private moment (which I was). But the man turned out to be a gracious host in this wilderness setting. He invited me to sit down on the bench and offered me his pair of binoculars to view a large red-headed woodpecker, the biggest woodpecker I ever saw.

Talking in hushed voices, I discovered that this man lived in Fort Lauderdale where I worked as a newspaper reporter in the late 1960s. We traded anecdotes about Fort Lauderdale then and now, me thinking what a small world it was. I got the impression he was more than a little weary of living in a busy city. 

I told my host that one of the last stories I wrote for the Fort Lauderdale News was about the alligators being hunted to near extinction back then. (New laws and increased enforcement subsequently stopped the poaching.)

"It looks like the 'gators made it," I said as we watched a baby alligator swim away.
He smiled for the first time and said: "Yeah, they made it all right. There's too damned many of them for some people to handle." Then he smiled again and added: "Personally, I like 'em."

Soon we were joined by a young couple at the end of the boardwalk. When I mentioned the name of Carl Hiaasen, a South Florida newspaper columnist and novelist, the young man exploded with enthusiasm. "I love his books," he gushed. "He always has some tourist getting killed in a horrible way. It's really funny the way he does it."
I made the natural assumption and asked this young man if he was a native Floridian like Hiaasen.

"No, I'm from Chicago," he said. "We're tourists."

Somehow, it all seemed to make sense standing out there on the boardwalk in the middle of an ancient cypress swamp.

Later, at the canal fronting the entrance to Big Cypress Bend, the man from Fort Lauderdale showed me something I had missed on my way in. The brackish water was literally teeming with fish, a soup of living fish that included alligator gar, bass, bluegill and sheepshead as well as other varieties we couldn't identify. A small egret stood on the canal bank, searching for minnows in the water and seemingly oblivious to the danger of all those tooth-lined jaws of the large garfish just below his beak. It was the most astonishing sight I had seen anywhere in the Fakahatchee Strand.

Driving back to Naples that day on the Tamiami Trail, I stopped my car at a particularly scenic spot to take one last photograph of the Everglades. I was trying to sneak up on an egret perched on a tree limb over the canal when I was startled by a commotion in the tall weeds directly in front of me. Stepping back, I heard a loud splash and watched the waters of the canal spread out around a sleek, dark figure with bumps on its back.

I had nearly stepped on a very large alligator.
 

-- WILLIAM STARR MOAKE