Robert Silk
During a paddle last October
in Everglades National Park, I turned on my camera to film what felt like a
scene out of National Geographic.
On one side of me, two
flamingos, likely from either the Yucatan Peninsula or Cuba, stood regally on a
sand flat, feeding. On the other side of
me, in water so shallow I could reach down from my kayak and touch the bottom,
a lemon shark swam harmlessly in search of fish. In the background, though the
camera didn’t capture it, thousands of shorebirds were perched on the beach,
from where they were making periodic sorties over Florida Bay.
Moments like that one are
what drew me to the wilds of southern Florida, and they ultimately led me to
write a book about this often misunderstood and underappreciated region.
Happily, that book, “An
Ecotourist’s Guide to the Everglades and the Florida Keys,” was released late
last month by the University Press of Florida.
Southern Florida is unquestionably
one of the most popular tourist regions in the U.S. But it mainly draws people
for sand and sun, for shopping and for the lively nightlife in Fort Lauderdale,
Miami and especially Miami Beach.
Try telling someone who’s
especially familiar with, say, California or the Rocky Mountain region, that
they should visit southern Florida for its full range of outdoor experiences,
on the water and off of it, and they’re likely to give you an incredulous look.
I should know; I was once that guy.
But over the course of 15
years living in this region, mainly in the Florida Keys, I’ve learned that beaches,
golf courses and seafood houses are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes
to the offerings of the area that occupies a triangle between Naples, Key West
and the Miami area.
As an inveterate explorer and
as an outdoors writer, I’ve had the fortune over those years to wade,
literally, into the depths of the Everglades. I’ve hiked old oil routes and
logging roads. I’ve kayaked small lakes teeming with dozens of alligators. I’ve
visited isolated Fort Jefferson, 70 miles off of Key West, where the largest
brick structure in the Americas stands beacon over the Florida Straits. I’ve
tooled around Cold War era missile sites. And I’ve snorkeled above the third-largest
barrier reef system in the world.
“An Ecotourist’s
Guide to the Everglades and the Florida Keys” doesn’t recount those moments.
Instead, it distills that experience into a practical, and I like to think
quite readable, do-it-yourself guide.
The book follows a
straightforward course. Starting just to the east of Naples, it takes readers
across the Tamiami Trail, almost to Miami, then jots south all the way to Key
West. Along the way, readers visit three national parks, five national wildlife
refuges, the enormous Big Cypress National Preserve, the Florida Keys National
Marine Sanctuary and 12 state parks. Together, those areas protect more than 5
million acres of land and water, providing recreational experiences such as
world famous shallow-water fishing, the finest diving in the U.S., some of
North America’s most diverse birdwatching and, yes, lounging on isolated
beaches.
In penning “An Ecotourist’s
Guide to the Everglades and the Florida Keys,” I also made sure to include a
primer on the imperiled Greater Everglades ecosystem. I wrote often about the
fights between conservationists and developers that have shaped the present
boundaries between Florida’s private and public lands. And I detoured off the
outdoor path to talk about funky and eccentric dive bars, restaurants and
attractions that help give southern Florida so much more character than many
people realize.
“An Ecotourist’s Guide to the
Everglades and the Florida Keys” will be available at bookstores around Florida
and hopefully elsewhere very soon and is already available online at Amazon,
Barnes
& Noble and several other booksellers.