Mangroves and Everglades

[asakiyume]

I've returned from paddling among mangroves and exploring the Everglades. It's hard to know where to begin, so I'm going to just plunge in any which way, and probably intersperse Florida-related LJ entries with other entries.

Why the Everglades? Many reasons. But, most basically, how could I not love a place that is neither water nor land. It's interphase, neither solid nor liquid. The sky is under your feet; the water is in the air; it's a supremely liminal place.



Along the horizon, you could see rain falling in one spot, bright skies in another. Here's what Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote in The Everglades: River of Grass about the rains around this time of year:

You can see it raining darkly and fiercely far off over their at the horizon across the scorched saw grass. The sky will be a boiling panorama of high and low cloud shapes, cumulus, strato-cumulus, alto-cumulus, dazzling and blue and dun ... When the clouds lift, the long straight rainy lines blow and curve from the sagging underbelly of the sky in steely wires or long trailing veils of wet the glitter in some sudden shaft of light from the forgotten sun.

Where you see dark steel blue toward the right, on the horizon, rain is falling


Rain is falling on the right and left edges of this photo's horizon



And here's the other end of those trailing clouds--the water underfoot around the grass, and the sun sparkling in it:



... And a swamp lily, because they were blooming everywhere, and they're beautiful:

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

How beautiful. It looks much different than I expected.

Those swamp lilies are lovely.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is the grassy part--the river-of-grass part--but there are also cypress domes and tropical hammocks that look more like a jungle. Pictures of those parts will come later!

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Sounds amazing. I can't wait to see them!

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

Thank you

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It is my great pleasure--you are very welcome!

[sovay]

It's interphase, neither solid nor liquid. The sky is under your feet; the water is in the air; it's a supremely liminal place.

That's lovely.

Thank you for the photographs! I'm glad you had such a place around you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thank you; me too! It was everything one could hope for in a vacation. It did have some awful disasters, but they were oddly concentrated in one day, and despite feeling awful while we were in them, they all ended well--and so became stuff of story. I couldn't ask for a better time.

[wuweibaby.livejournal.com]

Nice. And thank you for adventures and stories.


There used to be a program back when called The Everglades that my family used to watch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Everglades_(TV_series)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

How neat! I want to check this out.

We didn't actually ride an airboat, but we got to see several.

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

She always makes the best observations so I'll just second her.
From what I've seen on TV there are some dangerous invasive species lurking out there.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

There's some dangerous native ones, too! We went on one boat tour and were shown the manchineel tree, manzanilla de la muerte, which is entirely poisonous, complete with poison apples. Not to mention alligators and Florida panthers and, on the southern coast, crocodiles. (We got to see both alligators and crocodiles during the trip, but no panthers.)

[ivy]

Type 2 fun! It wasn't fun when you were doing it (that part, anyway) but it makes the whole experience more fun in retrospect, heh.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes! We met some great people thanks to the troubles we got into. And, conveniently, they didn't interrupt the type-one fun, but waited to happen until afterward, so that nothing was spoiled, if you know what I mean.

[sovay]

It did have some awful disasters, but they were oddly concentrated in one day, and despite feeling awful while we were in them, they all ended well--and so became stuff of story.

That's the best-case scenario for a disaster!

I couldn't ask for a better time.

Mazel tov.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

The sky is under your feet; the water is in the air...

Fabulous. Thank you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

My pleasure--too wonderful not to share.

[ivy]

This was my favorite part too -- as a Mississippi delta girl, I totally relate to and love environments like that. I don't live somewhere particularly swampy now, but the Gulf South still holds a place of fondness in my heart. Liminality forever!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oooh, the stories you must have of childhood adventures!

The Gulf south is a place I knew I yearned for ever since I was a kid, and I've felt intensely happy when I've been there. Liminality forever!!!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I love marshland of any sort- a magical place as our ancestors also believed.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Another thing that drew me to the Everglades is the Seminole Indians--they did and do live here, and some of them managed to keep out of the US government's clutches and avoid ethnic cleansing. I'll do another post on visiting the museum they maintain.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

How gorgeous. There's something magical about swamplands - liminal spaces, as you say, neither one thing nor the other.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And here I've focused on the river-of-grass nature of the Everglades, but there are also "islands" in it, where you get cypress trees growing, or other saw palmetto, or other semitropical trees, and those can be deep, dark, and mysterious. And there's the Big Cypress National Preserve, which we visited as well, which is a whole region, sitting just on top of what remains of the Everglades, that is all jungle-like.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I have never been to Florida at all, and my swamp experience is way too limited.

You know, though, I'm not sure Chun Woo would want to go. He's not very interested in plants or critters, which seems odd to me. OTOH, it was because of Chun Woo that I have been on a swamp tour near New Orleans.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So when Chun Woo requested the New Orleans swamp tour, was it the landscape (i.e., the scene) that attracted him? The overall effect as opposed to the component parts?

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all sure! And I can't ask him until Friday, when we go up for Family Night at Scout camp.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

When I mentioned to Sheeyun that I would need to ask Chun Woo this, he said in surprise that he himself had suggested the tour! :D And so it was-- I'd forgot. :D

We did go on one of those air boats. Very noisy.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ah, so not Chun Woo's request--but he must have ended up liking it, yes? I wonder what parts he liked best.

I gather the airboats are fun in a thrilling sort of way, but yeah, the noise would be hard to take. It would be cool to really be out there in the saw grass, where a conventional boat can't go, but [emoji of shrugging guy]

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I'll ask what he liked best.

We all enjoyed it, and earplugs helped a lot. I liked being in that environment and seeing the ecosystem, the plants and animals. And I liked our guide, who was not at all Crocodile Dundeeish.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

That isn't mist, that's Sterling Archer's three biggest fears manifesting into a locale.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Sterling Archer doesn't like getting his feet wet?

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

If there are potentially alligators and crocodiles in that water, definitely nope. And there's the risk of a brain aneurysm.

[pameladean]

How lovely and amazing! Thank you so much. I look forward to the other entries.

One of the things I loved about North Dakota when we would drive to Winnipeg for Keycon was that you could see whole thunderstorms minutely on the horizon, which was far far away because of the flatness of the land.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I loved that--seeing different weather on the horizon. Visually, the Everglades reminded me very much of what I imagine savannah or prairie must be like--the only difference being that there's no firm footing.

I was realizing I never get broad sky vistas like this except when I visit the sea. We were right by the sea several times during this trip, but even when we were as far away from it as you can get in southern Florida, the horizons and sky were still huge. For the first time, I could understand people from plains states coming to Massachusetts and feeling oppressed by the closed-in feeling. In Massachusetts, if you're not at the top of a high, bare hill or standing on the coast, your view of the sky is like that of a frog in a well. I've never minded that--never even noticed it--but coming home, I did. (Notice, I mean. I still didn't mind.)

[pameladean]

When people miss the sea that seems to be one of the things they miss.

You have precisely described my experience in going from Nebraska and Minnesota to upstate New York for graduate school. I felt horribly hemmed in and trapped, and as if all the weather were sneaking up on me. I was in Binghamton, and in fact the weather was sneaking up on me: Binghamton is cloudier and rainier than average for that area.

We did move from Minnesota to Massachusetts for four years, and I missed the huge spaces, but it wasn't anything like as bad as Binghamton. If you went west, even as far as Worcester, things did open out a little. We had friends there, and there was also a splendid vegetarian restaurant that we would visit, called Annapurna.

P.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Such wonderful photos!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

There's a metric ton more where these came from! (But I'll try not to overwhelm people with too much all at once.)

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

I love the Everglades! When I was looking at colleges, in high school, we drove from one school to another through the Everglades one evening and it was the most magical thing ever.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I like that approach to looking at colleges--a road trip to get to know the country!

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

They are such beautiful photos!

I feel like I'm missing something when people talk about how wonderful it is. I was born in a swamp (New Orleans) and moved to a new swamp (Florida) and living cheek-by-jowl with swamp has made me realize why people left these areas whenever possible for more temperate climates. :,

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

I understand what you mean. I love the idea of swamps and like to visit swamps, but I would not want to live in or too near to one. :P

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind trying to live in one for a little bit (a year would be good, to get a full progression of the seasons), for the experience. But I like where I live a lot, too, so I'd come back to it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Well, it's one thing be driving by, stop and get out, take a few steps in here or there, and rhapsodize. It's another thing to live there day after day--so there's that! And the mosquitoes in Flamingo (in Everglades National Park, way at the southern tip) were pretty fierce, and they were only at the "uncomfortable" (middle) of the visitors' center rating scale. There were two higher levels to go, the highest being "maddening." I don't think I'd want to experience that summer after summer. Temperate climates have a lot to recommend them! I love where I live. Then again, a good portion of Massachusetts is swampy/boggy so .... hmmm.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous! Thank you for sharing the photos.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's my very great pleasure! Thank you for stopping by and taking a look!

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Those swamp lilies are beautiful.

The bit about seeing rain on the horizon really spoke to me because (and I think perhaps I've told you this before) I was born and raised in the wide open West, and it was not until I worked a summer in the Rockies that I understood how important it was to me to be able to see far! far! off. Then I moved to France and ached for the open vistas of my childhood where the sky was wide and high enough to showcase cumulonimbus clouds in all their towering, thundering glory.

ETA: Oops. Junebug informed me that his plastic horse wanted a kiss from me, and I forgot to say that your talking about the rainfall on the horizon made me realize that not everyone grew up being able to see that sort of thing.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You did tell me! I remember some stories of you and your sister.

Here (and now I mean western Massachusetts, not the Everglades), if you're somewhere where there's farmland, you can get some pretty wide views--enough to see those cumulonimbus cloud towers--but still it's somehow much more closed in. You can't see miles, the way you could in Florida. I can really understand how you'd yearn for it.

beautiful

[pinkroo.livejournal.com]

I'm from FL, but never have been to the Everglades. The pics of rain in the distance makes me miss Florida (I haven't lived there since 2003).

Re: beautiful

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I understand how that goes! I grew up in New York State, but have never seen Niagara Falls. Especially when you're a child in a place, you don't necessarily get to see much beyond your own neighborhood.