birdsbeaks
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2007
- Messages
- 1,814
Thanks Bill! Those photos were taken in an area off the main park road named "Pa-Hay-Okee," a Seminole word meaning "grassy river" - a term that is, quite accurately, often used to describe the everglades as a whole. There is a boardwalk and an elevated platform that gives a somewhat rare glimpse of the everglades from above the treeline - a natural choice for taking in the sunset!
Literally, before human development changed the course of the water flow (there are now, and for at least the past ten years have been, ongoing efforts to restore the natural flow of water), the entire southern half of the state, from Lake Okeechobee down to Florida Bay (the last bit of mainland before you hit the Florida Keys) was, from the eastern coast to the western, one massive, but shallow and slow-moving, river!
I say "slow-moving" because the water only travels approximately ½ of a mile (0.8 kilometer) per day! In fact, one of the ways you can orient yourself in the environment (even if you've got no sun) is to put something that floats in the water, mark the location with a stick, watch it for a couple of hours (you're lost - what else are you gonna do?
), mark the final location with a stick and you've got a reliable north-south vector as the "river" always flows south. From any point in the everglades; walking south, north, or west won't do much good as there are vast expanses of nothing but swamp -- but, as the majority of Florida's east coast is highly developed, if you head east - you'll eventually hit civilization (or something like it 
). Simply avoid drowning, and dehydration (both of those are common perils), getting bitten by a water moccasin (cottonmouth), coral snake, eastern diamondback rattlesnake, American alligator, American crocodile, bull shark (no joke!), black bear, or Florida panther (critically endangered), and sheltering under a Manchineel tree (the Spanish explorers named it "la manzanilla de muerte" or "little apple of death") and you'll be fine!
The water in the background of this picture is only about 5 or 6 inches deep, and most of the everglades is like this, with occasional punctuations of deep holes formed by limestone erosion (a mostly natural process) and "islands," with foundations of ancient coral reefs, where sediment was able to accumulate and allowed the ubiquitous bald cypress trees to take hold.
If any of you gents ever decide to visit South Florida, I'd be happy to give you the "insider" tour!
I hope everyone is doing OK, and that the week has turned out to be a good one for you 
I'm going to be stuck indoors anyway, unfortunately, so I better get down to it 
Have a good day Guardians 
OTW is looking good 
Sweet capture of your lamb.
He had introduced his adult daughter as Mary, but it later transpired she was actually called Marie. Then they started referring to her as Emma. When I asked why they called her Emma, I was told, "Oh, we like calling her Emma." 
They actually seem to alternate between both names. His missus is English, but with Ivory Coast ancestry. She's called Si-Si, but her real name is something else. One of their two daughters is called Bella, but they also call her Si-Si sometimes. I've given up trying to remember what the youngest is called! 
