The Florida Everglades: Like No Other Place in the World

While most agree that the Florida Everglades is not often a highly desired destination, there are many who would beg to differ. There is a small but vivacious and animated group of individuals whose passion revolves around the lifestyle that this magnificent ecosystem provides. As a child I was lucky enough to befriend several those whose culture revolves around this unique yet treacherous area, the Florida Everglades are infamous for alligator hunting season, incredible fishing, bird watching and air boat visits.

As a teenager I was lured to the Everglades by tales of adventure and danger I would experience in no other place in the world. Peers would show me pictures of beautiful fish, caught fresh and eaten that evening, tell stories of brave birds that would fight for bait, they would scream in laughter and frustration as they would recollect the many shrimp and shiners they had lost to opportunistic birds that could clear a bait bucket within minutes. I remember a handsome classmate coming to school in a sling and describing how the clean break was caused by a silly oversight when wrestling a five foot alligator, adding how lucky he had been to not had lost his arm entirely after wrestling the animal who had reverted into a “death roll,” a common way for alligators to render their victim(s) incapacitated by tearing at muscle and meat. I’d shiver at the legend of a 20 foot python that roams a local fishing hole and could easily overpower an adult man if caught off guard and in the water, my fears to be only further reinforced when, in the following year, a thirteen foot Burmese Python was found dead after trying to digest a six foot alligator! Friends would tease about a mammoth alligator named Jaws and how he often searched for “Newbies” to the Everglades, he would follow their airboat and wait for an opportune time to attempt to tear them out of it… “New blood attracts the biggest ones!”, they’d say. I pretended to not pay attention but I’ll admit now I always looked over my shoulder when I sat on the edge of that deafening airboat…

Though the Everglades do provide endless adventure and game for those brave enough to seek it, in the evening, right before the sun sets, the orange, red and yellow hews engulf the sky and the view seems almost unreal. I remember concluding that paints and markers could never replicate the true identity of a “color” and no one who has ever watched a summer sunset over the Florida Everglades would ever dare disagree.