I awoke to the sound of rain softly beating against the side of the tent. The sides of the canvas were damp, but I barely felt it, wrapped tightly in my sleeping bag. Somewhere outside I could hear a vulture rustling it’s wings, most likely eyeing the camp, trying to determine if it was safe to approach. I glanced up at the tent window, and saw that the sun had not yet risen. The sky was still a solid, deep gray.
Eventually the sun would crest the edge of the beach, washing the sky with a light pink haze, edged in brilliant red. By the time it had moved beyond the tops of the palms, we would all be awake, perched on the picnic tables eating bagels and slathering on sunscreen before the day’s activities. It’s not a normal college schedule, rising at dawn and falling asleep shortly after dark, but when the days are filled with volunteering, canoeing, swimming, and hiking, it’s best to get an early start, and by the time the sun sinks below the ocean and the moon has risen to bathe the campsite in pearly white, all we can think about is sleep.
Each day brought a new adventure: whether meeting a panther face to face (literally), and learning that panthers, cougars, and mountain lions are in fact the same species (who knew?), or clearing brush to keep a trail clear for other explorers, each day of volunteering exposed students to the ins and outs of the Everglades ecosystems, especially with an up close look at what doesn’t belong- the tigers, snakes, monkeys and other exotic animals at the Everglades Outpost, rescued after escaping from research facilities or being abandoned by people who thought keeping a Bengal tiger for a pet would be a good idea, or the invasive species that plague the parks and choke out native plants.
Students also entered the Everglades themselves, getting as close as possible to the water while canoeing through mangrove tunnels, feet away from alligators, wading birds, and the other denizens of the swamps and waterways that make up the 1.5 million acres of the Everglades National Park, where we spent most of our time. A night hike during the full moon brought us within range of a group of feeding alligators, animals which look like nothing so much as baking logs during the day, but which come out in numbers in the cool of night to thrash through the swamp, snapping their jaws on unfortunate fish with a sound like a trunk closing. It is a rare group that gets to see a “feeding frenzy”- and a sight not quickly forgotten.
On another day we were able to get even closer to the wildlife, spending an afternoon on a beach in Key Largo, resting before the long drive back to Maryland, soaking in the sun, and snorkeling in the protected bay, which sheltered numerous fish and crabs, which could be seen hiding among the roots of the mangrove trees. The sky remained a perfect, incandescent blue throughout our trip- the temperature a perfect 81∞ each day, and bliss to our group, having just come from the melting snows and blustering winds in Maryland. An afternoon spent lying under the shade of a palm, listening to the waves brush softly against the beach, and watching wisps of cloud skirt across the sky, drifting in and out of sleep, was a perfect conclusion to a week spent out-of-doors, as near to the land as possible, without cell phones (no reception) and only about two watches between the lot of us, telling time by the angle of the sun and our own growing familiarity with the Florida skies.
The Everglades are a lesson in ecology. The climate is somewhat different from what we have here in Maryland: only two seasons, wet and dry. We were fortunate to visit during the dry season, when there are fewer bugs, almost no rain, and a higher likelihood of seeing animals, as they are bunched together around the few remaining large pools of water. The Everglades itself is actually a very, very slow moving river- 60 miles wide and 100 miles long, twice as wide as the Bay but half as long. During the wet season, May through November, the area floods to form acres of wetlands and swamp, which serve an important role in buffering Florida from hurricanes and flooding. Much of the damage done to Florida by storm systems in past years has been the result of the destruction of many of the wetlands that once absorbed the flooding caused by storms. The park itself is protected under a number of preservation efforts- but this doesn’t account for the encroaching development that threatens coastal regions elsewhere in Florida and around the world.
On the last night before we returned to Maryland, we came back to our campsite tired and sunburned, to find the site surprisingly dark. All week the moon had been so bright we had rarely needed lanterns to find our way around, but on this night, the moon hadn’t yet risen, and we could barely see our tents as we stumbled out of the vans. A few steps out of the parking lot, however, and we all stopped dead in our tracks. Without the moon, the sky was overflowing with more stars than most of us had seen in years, or in some cases, ever. The Milky Way was clearly visible, as were thousands upon thousands of stars we could only imagine even in a place with as little light pollution as the Eastern Shore. A group of us, without any planning or discussion, sprawled out in the grass to look up at the breathtaking span, sharing stories about constellations we could identify, and making up our own when we ran out of ones we knew. One girl pointed out that the light coming to us so strongly had been traveling for thousands of years to get here- and in many cases, the stars that originally gave off the light had at this point burned out. Looking up at the sky, which wrapped around us in an enormous dome unobstructed by any building or even trees, it was easy to feel small, a tiny speck in a vast expanse, and at the same time immensely connected to it all: to the stars, and the palms, and the cry of a heron somewhere in the night; to the alligators, and the flowing river where it met the sea within view of our campsite, and to one another, lying on our backs in the grass.
View photos of our trip here.
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