I recently had the great opportunity to visit Everglades National Park in South Florida on the tail end of the dry season.
Gazing out across the national park as we drove south from the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center towards Flamingo, my eyes swept across sawgrass prairie that was broken only occasionally by tree islands. Ivory-white egrets and great blue herons were the most obvious birds on this soggy landscape, though a few ospreys cruised overhead.
Few trails headed out from the road. That no doubt explained why, when we pulled over near one of those tree islands that touched the road, cars and trucks whipped by us in such a hurry that they couldn’t appreciate this unique landscape.
Yvette Cano, the national park’s director of education, had been checking her GPS coordinates as we drove south and here, along the road, she was satisfied that we had arrived at our destination.
Looking at the thick bald cypress forest, I wasn’t exactly sure what made this spot so attractive until Cano led me, Contributing editor Kim O’Connell, and Special Projects Editor Patrick Cone off the shoulder of the road and into the water.
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