SOUTHERN STATES | FLORIDA
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--It's the place that makes this place worth living in," my friend Mark said when I told him I was going to the Everglades.
"I've never been," said my friend David, a Miami native, when I told him I'd just come back.
One of the many things that distinguishes the Everglades from other national parks is this seeming divergence of attitude about it. For all the people who find it irresistible, there are just as many (if not more) who view it as eminently avoidable. There are also, distinguishing it even further from the Yosemites and the Yellowstones, vast numbers in whom admiration for it and distance from it happily co-exist.
"Today, everyone agrees that the Everglades is a national treasure," Michael Grunwald writes in "The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise." "It's the ecological equivalent of motherhood and apple pie."
But it never appears on the list of the 10 most-visited national parks, even though it is the only one that abuts an urban sprawl of several million people. The Everglades is like the difficult novel everyone recognizes as great but only the truly dedicated actually plow through. The "Ulysses" of federally protected wildernesses. Even Marjory Stoneman Douglas, whose love for the place infuses every word of her 1947 classic "The Everglades: River of Grass," rarely visited. When asked why, she reputedly said it was enough for her to know that it was there.
As it is for my friend David, who as a boy ran through Douglas' yard, and a great many other Floridians. We drive Alligator Alley and think that's it: that flat, featureless, long-winded plain. Many national parks burst with drama -- peaks, falls, geysers, grizzlies. The Everglades, by contrast, is unassuming and subtle, demanding patience and close attention. A large part of its appeal is in its absences: of noise, summer crowds, things blocking the horizon. Even its stars, the alligators, often appear less lifelike than audioanimatrons.
Of course, in most parks the fauna keeps its distance, frustrating visitors accustomed to zoos. In the Everglades, insects especially feel no such shyness and will eagerly approach you and get in your face.
"Mosquito level: High," the sign at the entrance station read. I thought of all the people I'd told about my Everglades trip. Some had recalled seeing tourists haloed by swarms. A few just said "July," and gave pitiless smiles.
I followed Larry Perez's car to Royal Palm. Perez, a science communications liaison for the park, was a handsome young man with two earrings under a ranger hat.
"A beautiful morning," he said, as we walked toward the sun. He seemed delighted to be out of the office, and impervious to stinging insects. "They call Montana 'Big Sky Country.' It doesn't hold a candle to what we have here."
We were walking on Anhinga Trail through Taylor Slough. "A slough," Perez said, "is any low-lying land that channels water through it." Our path was once the first road in the Everglades, built in 1915. Thirty-two years later the place was designated a national park; the first, as its literature claims, "created to protect a threatened ecological system."
Pay attention
"Every season has its charms," Perez noted. "To know the Everglades you have to see it in every season and at every hour. I can't tell you how great it is to walk these trails in the winter on a full-moon night. You don't need a flashlight."
We walked on. The sun burned down. The world opened up, as Larry pointed out things that had escaped my slacker eyes: a West Indian morning glory; a five-lined skink; snail eggs, clinging to a green stalk like white caviar; pond apples ("they taste like biting into a jar of turpentine"); a boat-tailed grackle; a swallow-tailed kite (another summertime visitor); a great blue heron; a mostly submerged gator, a green anole. (Actually, I spotted this bright lizard, too, but didn't know that it was indigenous, or that it changes color under stress.)
"What causes them stress?" I asked Perez.
"Capture."
Earlier, Perez had tried unsuccessfully to catch a snake that had stretched, unseen by me, 30 feet ahead of us. "There are 28 varieties of snake in the park, four of them venomous." There are also two non-native species, he said: the heavyweight Burmese python (a potentially serious threat to the ecosystem) and the earthwormlike Brahminy blind snake. Even newcomers, at least in this case, conform to the park's idea of diversity.
Two large black crows sat on a nearby limb. "They're the smartest birds in the park," Perez said. "I have literally seen these birds swoop down and take things off a grill when people's backs were turned."
Flora sounds threatening
The Gumbo Limbo Trail began near a stand of royal palms. It offered something people don't readily associate with the Everglades: shade. "This is the closest we come to a rain forest in South Florida," Perez said, as we walked the paved path under a thick canopy. He had prepared me for mosquitoes, but they were surprisingly quiet.
A tall tree with bright bark rose in front of us. "This is a gumbo limbo," Perez said. "often called 'the tourist tree' because it's red and peeling." He added that it can fall over and take root wherever it lands. We came upon a strangler fig and a poisonwood tree. In the Everglades, even the flora sounds menacing. No wonder people stay away.
A zebra longwing butterfly flitted past. "That's our state butterfly," Perez said. "We have the state reptile, the alligator; the state animal, the panther; the state marine mammal, the manatee; the state wildflower, the tickseed. The Everglades is quintessential Florida, man."
'Short slough slog'
Later, after we pulled off the road leading from Pa-hay-okee Overlook. Perez opened his trunk and extracted two large walking sticks -- more like wooden poles -- and handed one to me. He had promised me a "short slough slog" and, apparently, the time had come.
I had tried to sound nonchalant about this. I didn't ask about the possibility of encountering crocodiles. Perez had told me that they favor saltwater, and here the water was fresh. In fact, while South Florida is said to be the only place in the world where crocodiles and alligators co-habit, for the most part, they stay in their preferred liquids. Though there are places in the park where the sweetwater and saltwater, and hence the two reptiles, mix. I didn't ask about alligators either. It seemed too obvious. I did, however, question him about water moccasins. He said any animal that might do us harm would feel the vibrations of the water and move far away. He sounded pretty confident about this.
Just as we were about to head off, a tourist pulled up. "You're actually going in there?" he asked, incredulous.
"Yep," said Perez. "I've only lost one or two."
I stepped gingerly into the slough. The water was clear and refreshing. It was about the only thing that was. The sun was fierce. The footing was slippery. The pool was full of unidentifiable and suspicious forms. Added to the irrationality of plodding in sneakers through ankle-deep water was the insanity, in my mind, of doing it in the Everglades. One week before I would have seen such an excursion as a sure method of suicide.
"And people say there's no such thing as hiking in South Florida," Perez said cheerily, leading the way.
I tried to stay close, but inevitably fell behind. The water deepened in sections, causing more splashing, heightening my alarm. My pants became soaked up to my thighs. My shirt was dripping wet, though this was from perspiration. My sneakers sank in the muck. My arm tired from supporting myself with my stick, which was somewhat heartening as I realized it really was for walking (and not for beating off predators). My eyes stayed peeled on the watery path, which wiggled with what looked like large spider crabs.
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