THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING THERE

As mentioned prior, this author was headed for the Everglades for that 'in person' research that is so important in destination writing.When I think of 'Everglades', I think of grasses and gators, swamps and snakes, men in flat-bottomed boats poling their way through tall grasses, risking their lives through gator infested waters, the call of exotic birds echoing through the Spanish moss-draped pines and cypress...oh what a vision I held in my imagination! 

Mind you, my friends, I have read extensively of the true tales of the early settlers of the islands, hardscrabble men who fought nature and each other, men who decimated the exotic birds for plumes to decorates ladies hats, men who massacred the mighty gator for hide to make purses and shoes for the women of the civilized world. I had the perfect way to view this life of times gone by --- a private boat! Certainly a private boat and captain would be the only way to experience my vision!

 Never did I expect the Ten-Thousand Islands to be just that...hundreds of thickly grown mangrove islands sitting sporadically in the (then) calm inner-waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  My vision evaporated as we sped through the gulf waters, each island a replica of the other. No gators; my exotic birds were flocks of white pelicans, the grasses were nil as was the Spanish moss and swamps. I must admit, my disappointment was great when I realized that my vision, my research, was not flying across the smooth waters of the Gulf of Mexico, but inland, behind me, in the land of the Seminole, where the grit and gut of my story must take place.

 It was a wrong turn. It was beautiful, but it was not the heart and soul of my story. There was no adversity; there was no challenge. My story lay behind me in the tall grasses, In the mangrove tunnels (above), the home of the gator, the cypress knees and swamps, the place where the exotic birds call through the tall trees of the mysterious forests of my Everglades.