The ‘Glades Beyond the Gators

FLORIDA, Fla. â€”  Having speared a fat fish, a great blue heron is poised to gulp. I stand on the bank of the Kissimmee River-the headwaters of the Ever-glades-watching the wading bird, expecting that the drama of swallowing will surpass that of the impaling. Surely this feathered predator would fare better, I think, if it had a short, wide, straight neck-like that of a gator-instead of a narrow, sensuous S-curve that’s prettier than it is practical.

Then again, maybe not.

Misconceptions about this swamp and its inhabitants are as prolific as mosquitoes. In fact, anyone who kinda-sorta can locate the general vicinity of the Everglades on a map has earned the right to boast she knows more about this place than most folks. Hint: It’s a natural wonder, not a national park, although part of it does sit inside Everglades National Park on Florida’s southern tip.

I had been in and out of this corner and that in the course of making a television documentary on the Everglades, and the land never ceased to tug at my curiosity. When an opportunity for a short vacation arose this past winter, my first thought was: Now I can go to the “gglades without an agenda, just wander wherever I feeellt drawn.

The Everglades is a state of discovery, a journey, not a destination. You can’t simply go and see it. You have got to flow through it.

It’s natural to start where the ecosystem starts, just south of Orlando. There, in a patchwork of marshes, ponds and lakes-some natural, many not-areis the headwaters of the Kissimmee River, which runs 100 miles south to Lake Okeechobee., and ultimately covers the interior of the southern half of the state.

Historically, Okeechobee would spill over its banks during rainy spells, and the water would move south, ever so slowly, a shallow “river of grass� 50 miles wide and 100 long, sustaining a unique population of animals and plants. Then came development. Today, a dike encircles Okeechobee, and 50% of the original 4-million-acre Ever-glades is gone forever, drained, ditched, diverted.

But as I stand here on the banks of the Kissimmee, the glass looks half full instead of half empty. Fifty years ago , half of the 103-mile meandering Kissimmee was turned into a tidy, deep canal. The fish went belly up, and the wading birds went away. Now, a river restoration experiment is in progress: An eight-mile stretch of canal recently was backfilled outside this crossroads hamlet, and the Kissimmee again looks and acts like a real river, complete with pretty oxbows.

A tranquil place from which to watch wildlife return to the Kissimmee is the 1,000-acre Pearce Homestead, a 1900s farm-museum-park complex here that recalls central Florida’s boom years as a cattle countryregion.

Nearby is the 46,000-acre Kissimmee Prairie State Preserve.. This vast, pristine mosaic of wet and dry prairies, flower-filled marshes and shady hammocks (clumps of broadleaf hardwoods) is accessible only on foot, bicycle or horseback.

It’s less serene but decidedly more fun to see the Kissimmee by airboat, a contraption that glides across shallow water with the help of a propeller or huge fan mounted on back.

I take a seat high atop one of these squirrely craft and put on earphones to protect my hearing as the driver revs the engine. We’re off. Ducks skitter frantically out of our path. Alligators duck under our boat. An anhinga, a bird that looks more like a snake, retreats by pulling its long black neck underwater. A gallinule, as striking a bird as I’ve ever seen, hides its purple head, with its yellow-tipped red beak, in the brittle branches of a dying myrtle tree. A huge flock of blue-winged teal rises like a cloud ahead of us.

The ride whets my appetite for speed and noise.

Sebring

I stop for lunch at Chaateau Elan, a new hotel and spa overlooking the historic Sebring International Raceway. The hotel is crawling with wannabe race drivers, students at Panoz Driving School., They learn onwhich uses the 3.7-mile, 17-turn track famed for its 12-hour endurance race that draws the world’s daredevils every March.

I’ve never really gotten over having to trade in my Camaro for a family-sized SUV, so I sign up for a spin with Charles Espenlaub, a Panoz senior instructor.

I insert myself into the passenger seat of a gleaming GT racer with 250 horsepower. In an instant I smell rubber burning, see orange pylons flying, and hear whooping and hollering (mine).

I yell: “What are we doing, 100?� “Forty,� Espenlaub says, grinning and skidding out of an S turn. He’s not yet out of second gear.

When the ride and the rush end too soon, I appreciate the wisdom of the visionary who built the spa here. After an hour of being scrubbed with aromatic gels and sea salts, I am back in shape to face the creep-and-crawl traffic on U.S. 27, the highway between Orlando and Okeechobee.

Clewiston

The elevation here , in the Everglades Agricultural Areasouth of Okeechobee, is 12 feet above sea level; ; there’s more topographical relief in one block of San Francisco than in 100 miles of Everglades all the way south to Florida Bay. No wonder people have trouble believing the “river of grass� a’the ctually river of grass� actually flows.

I’m in the Everglades Agricultural Area, home to the state’s sugar industry. In 1882, Hamilton Disston of Philadelphia bought millions of acres here for 25 cents apiece, drained the “wasteland� and planted sugar cane.

Gators live here, as well as egrets, Just south of Lake Okeechobee is a landmark of dubious ditinctionstinction: “sugar mountain,� a 35-foot-high mound of unprocessed sugar.

He drained the cheap “wasteland� and planted sugar cane, developing an industry that thrives to this day.

Gators and egrets live here, in the Everglades Agricultural Area, along with barn owls and Ccotesia wasps. The owls, lured here by nesting boxes planted strategically in the cane fields, keep rodents in check naturally, without further polluting the ‘glades with chemicals and pesticides; the genetically engineered wasps devour destructive insects.

The hardest thing to control is not bugs, vermin or reptiles, but water. A half-century ago, after two devastating hurricanes, a levee was built to contain Okeechobee, along with a vast system of locks, canals and gates to regulate the coming and going of water.

The lake these days has more masters than it does water, with farmers, recreational boaters, environmentalists, developers and sport fishermen all angling for a share.

On my February visit, everyone within spittin’ distance of the lakewithin spittin’ distance of the lake is lamenting that the water is at its level’s being the its lowest level in 100 years because of an unusual winter drought. Even so, the sheer expanse of water (Okeechobee means “bBig wWater� in the language of the Seminole Indians) is amazing in its length and breadth, whether you see it from an airboat in the middle or from the 110-mile Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, which runs on top of the dike.

Loxahatchee

Alligator eyes are staring up from the saw grass marsh as wildlife biologist Bill Thomas parks his airboat as close as possible to a tree island and hops out. The water’s just a foot deep. I jump in behind him, eager to explore this unique Everglades habitat, a 147,392-acre refuge of deer, spiders, bobcats, otters, marsh rabbits, wood storks, red-bellied turtles and pygmy rattlesnakes.

I look for Bill’s approval before I make a step: “Any gator holes here?�

Before Bill can say no, black muck sucks me in up to my hips. I jettison my camera back onto the boat and try not to panic. The refuge, which is only 30 highway miles inland from the luxuries of West Palm Beach, has the greatest density of alligators south of Lake Okeechobee. Suddenly I wish I had been content to experience the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge the way most folks do: Ttour the visitor center and learn, among other things, that Loxahatchee is a Seminole word meaning “river of turtles,� and that Marshall was a biologist who worked tirelessly for Everglades restoration; then check out the observation tower; stroll the Cypress Swamp Boardwalk Trail and the Marsh Trail;, and paddle the 51/2-mi51/2 -mile canoe trail.

That evening, I feel I have earned my rest at the Horse Wwhisper, a nearby bed-and-breakfast. Given its location, I might have named it something more Everglades-y, like Gatorgrowl or Turtletalk. But my hostess (like many Florida residents) has never ventured into the wildlife refuge. Instead, she was inspired by her neighbors’ animals: Just down the street are the manicured fields and pampered ponies of the Palm Beach Polo Club.

I make an event out of washing off the mud and muck of the Everglades in the large bathroom with lava rock walls and tropical deeccor. The comfy bed is tempting, but I dress and join the happy hour out by the inn’s pond.

Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation

Alligator Alley, officially Interstate 75 or Everglades Parkway, cuts across the southern Florida peninsula from Fort Lauderdale on the Atlantic to Naples on the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a 200-mile swath of flat asphalt that severs the Everglades at its midsection.

Halfway across is the Big Cypress are two Indian reservations, homBig Cypress and Miccosukee.

Big Cypress is home to the Seminoles, who tell their tribe’s story in the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum at the visitors center.

The Seminoles split from the Creeks and settled in Florida in the 18th century. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 ordered them and other southeastern tribes to relocate west of the Mississippi. The Seminoles chose to fight the U.S. government, and the subsequent Seminole War lasted eight years. In 1842, most of the surviving Seminoles joined their Indian brethren in Oklahoma.

But a few hundred hid in this swamp-a place so inhospitable that the government left them alone.

I get a sense of where and how those valiant Native Americans escaped capture as I stroll a mile-long boardwalk that meanders through Big Cypress Swamp.

I I sample Seminole foods-frog legs, gator tail nuggets, catfish and fry bread-in the Swamp Water Cafee on the reservation’s Billie Swamp Safari attraction.

I sign on for a swamp buggy eco-tour through hammocks and around cypress domes. When we slip into a primeval slough, the swamp buggy’s hybrid design, a cross between an amphibious tram and a monster truck, proves its ingenuity in mastering the muck.

The native wildlife-the gators, deer, snakes and wading birds-is thrilling to see. But because animals don’t always reveal themselves on cue, the proprietors here have imported exotics such as water buffalo and antelopes. Their presence-jarring and not a little hokey-speaks volumes of our mainstream culture’s unreasonable demands on nature, and on the Everglades, in particular. We expect this magnificent swamp to serve us-at the very least, to entertain. Too long did we regard this place as a wasteland; too late did we realize that nnature meant for this broad, shallow ecosystem to be a receiver of water, a holder of water, a purifier of water; nothing more, nothing less.

I’m tempted to stay overnight in one of the wilderness chickee huts on the reservation. Not much more than a thatched lean-to on stilts, it promises an authentic Native American experience. But another Native culture is calling me down the road.

Miccosukee Indian Reservation

The Miccosukee tribe’s cultural center is halfway across U.S. 41, the Tamiami Trail, wwhich starts outside Miami and parallels I-75, ending near Naples on the Gwulf of Mexico.est and curves south, paralleling I-75 and ending outside Miami.

The MFrom the iccosukees conduct hcultural center, which is on the highway, the tribe conducts highly recommended airboat tours into pristine sections of a water conservation area. Everglades National Park. But if you’re feeling airboated-out, try a tram tour (it starts just east of the Miccosukkee center) to the observation tower that looks out over Shark River Slough. And if the weather is good, I recommend a drive on the Loop Road, which starts near the tram tour. It’s a three-hour meander on a dirt road into the heart of Big Cypress Preserve, considered prime bird-watching territory-and also home to orchids and panthers.

Twenty A few miles east of Loop Road aon Route 41 liesnd south on Florida 997 (Krome Avenue) lies another unique Everglades hybrid: the Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center, a modernmodern high-rise complex that offers the comforts of 302 rooms, five restaurants, a full-service European spa, and a fitness center-a. And a casino.

My room is serene, with a distinct Indian feel in its tile-mosaic decor and hand-carved furniture. After refreshing myself in my room-comfortable but ordinary-I decide on an early dinner in the main dining room, which is open to the casino on three sides. After choosing a Cabernet to accompany my prime rib dinner, I resume reading a guidebook and the story of Guy Bradley, a member of the Audubon Society, who in 1905 was hired as a conservation officer in the Everglades to protect colonies of American egrets. Their feathers were all the rage in women’s hats at the time, and Bradley was killed by a poacher.

By the time I finish dinner, my senses are on overload with the noise from the casino. I debate trying my hand at poker, bingo or “lightning lotto-a winner every 20 seconds!’-but decide to hoard my luck for tomorrow.

A wildlife biologist I met when I once worked on a documentary here has promised to take me along on an aerial survey of panthers. I’ve been advised not to get my hopes up: Lots of park personnel have never seen a panther in the wild.

Everglades National Park

Within minutes of takeoff, the radio transmitter chirps. Circling tight and banking hard to the right, the pilot yells: “There!� He drops to 500 feet, using the Cessna’s right wing like an index finger, dipping it down to point at something on the ground.

A tawny animal is moving along a trail in the grassy prairie. Its slinky gait, even when witnessed through a rush of vertigo, is flat-out feline. It’s the Florida panther, also known as swamp devil, swamp screamer, swamp lion.

Only about 50 remain in the wild, making the panther among the most critical of all the 68 endangered and threatened species living in the ‘glades.

Everglades National Park is 1.5 -million acres of saw grass prairies, pinelands, hardwood hammocks, mangrove forests and shimmering water. The best way to experience it is not by air, but by land and water .

The park headquarters is outside Florida City onHomestead on Florida 933697, about 30 miles south of U.S. 41. Stroll the boardwalks and trails (one of the best is the Anhinga Trail) aalong the main park road and join in ranger-led events.

One of the best is the Anhinga Trail.

There’s one resort, the Flamingo Lodge, which besides rooms, suites and cottages rents all manner of equipment for exploring the park, including houseboats, canoes, kayaks, skiffs, fishing poles, bicycles and binoculars.

The resort’s most popular sightseeing tour is a back-country cruise into a mangrove swamp. This exotic habitat-the calendar image most people associate with the Everglades-is dark and hopelessly tangled with tree roots, vines and submerged vegetation, the perfect cover for the endangered rare American crocodile. It’s here that the “river of grass� eRiver of Grass ends: Saw grass meets sea grass and fresh water mingles with salt; the Everglades joins Florida Bay.

Boating across the bay at the conclusion of my journey, I notice two shadows moving slowly under the green water. Expecting to see the dorsal fins of dolphins, I am surprised-and delighted-when an endangered manatee surfaces to inhale. Her calf follows. It occurs to me here that the biggest, most memorable moments in the ‘gGlades are this subtle.