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Mangroves and Everglades
Jul. 3rd, 2016 11:54 pmI'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:
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:
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:
