Ecotourism in Florida - Without a Paddle

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Outside Magazine August 2003

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The Water Issue: Restoration Dreams
Without a Paddle
Journey with us through the watery heart of the largest subtropical wetlands in America: the Everglades. Why? Because it's there—or used to be.

By W. Hodding Carter


	Illustration by Brian Cronin

"WAKE UP, HODDING, WE'VE GOT TO GET GOING." A kick in the ribs accompanies these grumbled words.

A six-foot-six-inch redheaded monster stands over me. Without hesitating, he starts swinging his arms in full circles like an irate baboon, rocking our makeshift canoe campsite. The monster's name is David Conover. He's a 42-year-old documentary filmmaker, and he's been swinging his arms all night long for two nights straight. Something's gone wrong with his wrists and hands after six days of poling a canoe through the Shark River Slough, in Everglades National Park. The windmilling makes his arms feel better, and under different circumstances I might feel happy for him.

"Up yours," I snort. "It's not even morning yet." A half-opened eye reveals the lie in this. I'm dazzled by a sparkling array of fairy poops strung across a never-ending expanse of man-tall saw grass set afire by the earliest rays of the sun.

From a foot away, another of my companions chimes in: "If we don't find a way through today, I really

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think we should turn around." That's Steve Robinson, our grizzled, ponytailed 50-year-old Everglades park naturalist, rising from the floor of his canoe like Count Dracula from his coffin. Feeling uncharitable, I scoff. Steve's worked in the park for 25 years but seems to be slightly daunted, having never done what we're attempting: a complete north-south crossing of the Everglades, from the Tamiami Trail—the causeway that cuts through this vast inland sea of cypress trees, mangrove thickets, and alligators from Miami to the Gulf Coast—heading due south to Florida Bay. He's tried cutting through from Pa-Hay-Okee Overlook, as well as boating up from Whitewater Bay, but was halted each time by an impenetrable labyrinth of mangroves. Now, after six days of all-out poling, averaging less than half a mile per hour, we're stuck in the same labyrinth. "Well, then! I say! It's time to make an early go of it, isn't it?" my third companion trills as she smiles and unravels herself from her mosquito netting. I think she even says "knackered." This is Saranne Taylor, a sparkling, fit 60-year-old Brit turned Mainer. I've asked her along on the advice of mutual friends, because she's led Outward Bound trips for decades and tackled adventures from Nepal to New Hampshire. Her optimism is driving me crazy.

My mind quickly starts to ask the hard questions: Where am I? Who are these people? Why won't they let me sleep? And why am I surrounded by water?

Oh, yeah, now I remember.

About three years ago, in the midst of a personal quest to locate an adopted manatee, I stumbled across a not-too-surprising fact about Florida: Its environmental programs are poorly run. Take the manatees. They've been on the endangered species list since 1973, and that makes it a federal crime to feed the animals, let alone touch one. In one part of the state, environmental officers would barely let you look at the beasts; in another, people were practically humping them. And more get killed by boats every year. This got me thinking: If they're mismanaging something as simple as a bunch of John Goodman-size sea cows, how might things be going with the bigger environmental projects? That's when the word everglades popped into my head like one of those fluorescent-orange South of the Border billboards.

The Everglades has been a nightmare for decades, even before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal government's go-to guys when it comes to massive hydrological projects, took over managing South Florida's water system in 1948. The Corps hit the gas pedal, drying up much of the Everglades in an attempt to balance the ever-encroaching needs of the cities with those of the farms. As a result, the Everglades has shrunk to less than half its original size and has been pushed to the brink of ecological collapse.

So here I am, stuck on the southern tiptoe of America, floundering in the watery outback in a desperate bid to learn if the state of Florida, the federal government, and the Corps have, in fact, figured out a way to turn the clock back and save this place. But what is—or was—the Everglades? A glorified swamp? A pristine landlocked water world? A polluted cesspool?

"Hodding! See if you can plot our location on the chart, would you?" the monster growls. "It'd probably help to know where we are before we get lost."

Right now, whatever the Everglades may be, I just want to get the hell out.

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