Credit: NASA

I grew up in Central and South Florida, spending my first 10 years on a farm at the edge of the historic Everglades (1), then moving to the scrub, pinelands and “sink” lakes of the Lake Wales Ridge(2), where I remained through high school, and finally settling on the so-called Gold Coast (3).

I’ve watched Florida change from the days of two-lane access down US 1 and across US 41 to the current Sunshine State Parkway, I-95/75 morass. The small town where I grew up is now three times that size, and still considered small by most standards, but the coastal county (second-largest county east of the Mississippi) that numbered 130,000 souls in 1962 is now in the neighborhood of 1.2 million and still growing. Most of them live within ten miles of the coast.

Coastal Scrub

Pine Flatwoods

Water used to be a glut on the market in South Florida — so much so that a vast network of canals was dug to get rid of it initially, and to control its flow after the land dried out some. There are no natural areas south of Lake Okeechobee that are more than 20 feet above sea level. South Florida has always — until the past century — been intimate with its estuaries, lakes and wetlands. That has changed. The scramble for space — for golf courses, condos, cities, roadways, shopping centers and the other necesseties of the Good Life in the Sun Belt — has dried up many of the coastal wetlands, and polluted and otherwise disturbed most of the rest. While large areas of the western peninsula are still dominated by water, its flow has been disrupted to the point of permanently changing the hydrology and ecology of the southern half of the state.

We can argue these issues pro or con. It matters not. What is, is. And, in the long term (perhaps even short term) it isn’t going to matter at all. Five thousand years ago, the southern and coastal regions of Florida were submerged as part of the Continental Shelf.

Much less time in the future, they will almost certainly return to that state, at least in large part. What is, is.

This blog, with its images and imagry, is my testament to the marshes, swamps, lakes, prairies and other wet places of the Land of Flowers, la Florida. It’s where I grew up, where I learned to love the outdoors, and where I most love to be. We will never see its like again.

We may, or may not, see anything similar.