American Treasures: Everglades National Park

By Allen Holder, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Feb. 24–EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. — This seems like the perfect ending to a perfect winter day on the southern tip of Florida. It’s a balmy 72 degrees, the radio DJ said a few minutes ago. The slowly sinking sun has created a soft orange light, just right for snapping a few pictures.

At the edge of a river known as Taylor Slough, a gray-and-brown cormorant spreads its wide wings to dry after a quick dip. Within a few dozen yards are anhingas and ibises, blue and green herons — birds I wouldn’t have recognized a couple of days ago. Occasionally one dips its head beneath the water on a hunting foray.

On the surface, it’s very peaceful.

Then one by one, six alligators peek out from beneath the indigo surface as they glide effortlessly, menacingly through the water. The world is put on alert. Silently, they slide back out of sight. But they’re still out there — and everybody knows it.

Life can be deceptive in the Everglades. It’s a good idea to pay attention.

‘Gator country

The 1.5-million acre park spread before us, looking a little like the docile Kansas prairie. From the top of the 45-foot Shark Observation Tower, we could see wide swaths of brown grass interrupted by green wooded areas.

These are the Everglades, the swampy grassland that writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas described in 1947 as a “River of Grass.”

During much of the year, if you take just a few steps in, you’re likely to soak your shoes. And the long brown blades are sawgrass edged with sharp teeth.

“In the rainy season the water comes to the edge of the road,” guide Jose Fernandez said one afternoon as he led visitors on the Shark Valley tram tour from the park’s northern edge. “Now is the peak of the dry season, and it seems like a desert out there.”

In what passes for winter in South Florida, sunny days in the 70s are common. In the hot, humid summer, the shallow swamps fill with mosquitoes.

“We have only two seasons here,” Fernandez said. “Hot and hotter. Some people call it ‘mosquito’ and ‘non-mosquito.’ “

Buzzing, biting mosquitoes that make you realize winter is the best season for an Everglades visit. And speaking of bites, in any season there are alligators. Too many to count.

“Everything you see out there that looks like an old tire or a piece of rubber is an alligator,” Fernandez said. “Plastic? They may seem like it. But there are no plastic alligators here.”

From front to back on two tram cars, retirees, parents and kids were craning their necks and pointing their cameras toward the wide meadows, really the Shark River Slough, whose water creeps toward the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of about a quarter-mile a day.

“There’s one!” a teenage boy in the seat ahead of me would shout, he and his sister on full alert. “Look over there! Is that one?”

Halfway through the tour we reached the end of the road: the Observation Tower. A long circular ramp led to the top, where we should have been impressed by the sight before us.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off five fat alligators that lounged lazily near the edge of the Shark River, soaking up the midafternoon sun. They appeared to be perfectly content. One even rested its head on the tail of another. How smart is that?

As the tram slowed near the tower, Fernandez pointed out a short paved walking trail we might explore but warned: “If you see an alligator on the path, your hike has just ended. Don’t even think about crossing where that alligator is.”

Sure enough, one of the beasts was lying on the pavement, oblivious to any human activity nearby.

Park rangers warn us to stay at least 15 feet away from alligators. And they caution that an alligator can outrun a human — at least for a short distance.

Fortunately the ‘gators I saw out of the water seemed to have only one thing on their walnut-sized brains: sunbathing.

“Alligators spend the vast majority of their time trying to regulate their body temperatures,” ranger Jaclyn Dostourian said. That means a lot of lying around. A healthy alligator can go weeks, maybe months, without eating, we were told.

I decided it would be in my best interest not to find out which ones were hungry.

For the birds

If alligators are a star attraction for visitors to the Everglades, the birds are scene-stealers.

“I didn’t expect to see as many birds as I have,” said Penny Davis, who was visiting with her husband, Denny, from Hiawatha, Iowa.

“I have been wanting to come here to the Everglades for a long time,” she said. “I have seen it on TV, but I wanted to see it for myself. It’s just fantastic.”

For birders, this must be heaven. More than 400 species of birds have been spotted in the Everglades. Several species are endangered.

“We get all kinds of birders in here who have books,” Fernandez said. “The main species they want to see is the snail kite (an endangered bird of prey). It’s a black bird with a white band around the tail.”

I didn’t see any snail kites, and I didn’t have any books to help me tell one species from another. But I watched. And I listened to the experts around me. After a couple days I was pretty sure I could tell an ibis — a little white bird with a long orange bill — from a brown-feathered, green-eyed double-crested cormorant. I was less sure about which heron was a great blue and which was green or tricolored.

On a walk along the Anhinga Trail one morning near the Royal Palm visitor center, ranger Dostourian pointed out many of the birds nesting near Taylor Slough. Many of the 20 or so participants on the walk clutched books and took careful notes.

My own notes show that we saw cormorants, and anhingas, turkey vultures and black vultures, purple gallinules, white ibises, great egrets and all kinds of herons. The sighting of a wood stork, a long-legged endangered wading bird that’s described as a “touch feeder,” caused particular excitement.

Herons preened at water’s edge. Cormorants lined up along a fence rail. Anhingas congregated in trees.

I thought I’d seen all of them, until I recalled Penny Davis’ lament the day before.

“I still haven’t seen a flamingo,” she said.

It’s possible to find flamingoes in the Everglades, too — in the Florida Bay, for instance. But I wouldn’t have traded the show at Taylor Slough for anything.

A hard hammock?Many people don’t know what to expect when they arrive in the Everglades, ranger Leon Howell said.

“They’re expecting a deep, dark swamp or a wide-open prairie full of airboats. They’re surprised by the diversity.

“There are many kinds of places that make this place what it is — the pine forests, the prairies, the hardwood hammocks. And there are many kinds of animals living in those places.”

I had seen the prairies and the sloughs. But a hammock?

I was still thinking of a hammock as a comfortable place for an outdoor nap when I wandered onto the Gumbo Limbo Trail, not far from the Royal Palm visitor center.

Nowhere did I find a place to stretch out and snooze.

A hardwood hammock, I finally figured out, is an entirely different thing. It can be thick with trees and vegetation, sitting just a little higher than the land surrounding it.

“We measure our elevation in inches,” Jose Fernandez had told me back at Shark Valley. Now, in the southeastern part of the park, I was beginning to see firsthand the difference it makes when the ground rises just a couple of feet above the wetlands.

As I wandered along the blacktop path, the canopy thickened. Sunlight struggled to get through, creating a dappled pattern on the forest floor. Hard to believe that this area was devastated as recently as 1992, when Hurricane Andrew blew through. If not for the blacktop, it would be difficult to walk among these trees. With 60 inches of rainfall a year, the growing season never ends.

This felt like a jungle. Ferns grew thickly along the ground. Royal palms towered, and woody vines clung to tree trunks. Many were unfamiliar — such as the gumbo limbo tree that gives its name to the trail. Known for its peeling red skin, the gumbo limbo is nicknamed the tourist tree, and its soft bark is easy to carve. Apparently it’s well-suited for merry-go-round horses, too, as well as salves, medicines and incense.

The longer I stayed, the more I became attuned to the area. I noticed the waxy, elliptical-shaped leaves of some trees. I listened as silence gave way to a subtle symphony of birds calling and flapping their wings.

Like the alligators that surfaced from just below the water, everything I had seen for two days in the Everglades had been just a little unexpected. I walked out of the hammock, eager to see what was next.

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This is the sixth in a series of occasional stories about America’s national parks. To read earlier stories, go to KansasCity. com/travel.

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About the park

Everglades National Park was established in 1947 and encompasses more than 1.5 million acres across the southern tip of Florida. It is the largest national park east of the Rocky Mountains as well as one of the most endangered.

For wildlife lovers, the numbers are staggering: More than 400 species of birds have been identified in the park, as well as 25 species of mammals, 60 species of amphibians and reptiles and 125 species of fish. Among rare or endangered animals are the American crocodile, Florida panther and West Indian manatee.

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@ KansasCity. com/travel: See more pictures from Everglades National Park.

More inside: Great walks and ranger talks at Everglades National Park, plus when to go, what you’ll see and Web sites to help you plan.

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To reach Allen Holder, travel editor, call 816-234-4397 or e-mail aholder@kcstar.com.

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