In the bigger, more famous neighboring park in southern Florida, the paid guide assured me that the American alligator “is a solitary creature, you never see more than one or two together”. In Big Cypress, I counted 16 alligators in one puddle and 17 in the next. Unlike most other wildlife I try to photograph, the alligators don’t run away; they look you right in the eyes and even slowly move towards you. Some are easy to spot, but while I was counting, three more were sneaking up on me.
Most of the million acres in Big Cypress and its smaller partners are actually prairie habitat for the endangered Florida panther, but there was a devastating fire recently, in our rapidly heating world. I drove the loop road instead, looking for gators in the gullies, but I often found myself looking up at the various trees to look at the air flowers hanging on to trunks and branches. In the hardwood hammocks, you might see some tree snails. And I saw a lot of birds, especially wood storks and other large wading birds.
Coming from the Naples side, I stayed in Everglades City, which is tucked in between the Ten Thousand Islands, the Everglades western estuaries and mangrove islands, and Big Cypress. Before the highway was extended to Key West, many visitors took boats to Key West from Everglades City. They’re rebuilding the hurricane damaged visitor center there in the name of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, who wrote the book, River of Grass, that led to the protection of 2.5 million acres of lower Florida. Fortunately, large commercial efforts to farm, graze and otherwise exploit the land had all failed, so the environmental coalition won. Carbon pollution raises sea levels, so the future is uncertain. But for now, this is a good place for adventure travel out into the mangroves.
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