The Florida Bay
June 28th 2007 17:56
The locals here joke that the Bay is so shallow you could wade all the way to Mexico from Key Largo. That's not too much of an exaggeration; maximum depths at high tide aren't more than 9 feet deep anywhere close to land.
The Bay teems with life for the observant; early in the morning you can see 6-foot sharks wriggling on the exposed tidal flats. The first time I saw this, I tried to help--thought the poor thing was beached! He was too big and thrashy of a fellow for me to move on my own. While I was knotting pieces of rope together so I could tow him back to deeper water, though, the tide came in and my "poor bugger" swam easily off in a few inches of water. I found out later that the sharks feed often in this way, swimming in onto the flats before the tide recedes and stuffing themselves on crabs and shrimp, then catching a ride out with the incoming tide.
Wild dolphins also abound here, hunting in the shallows around the small mangrove keys in the evenings. Huge, gentle manatee can be spotted coming in close to shore looking for a drink of fresh water from someone's dock hose. Ospreys (also known as fish eagles) float high above the mirror-calm surface of the Bay, making lazy circles in the still, hot air. Cormorants stand on channel markers with wings outstretched, as if in welcome. The deep, fecund smell of mangroves and marsh intensifies with the damp night air.
I love it so much; the Florida Bay is the very womb of Mother Earth. If you really want to know the meaning of life, it's all there for you; the age-old and ongoing tales of birth, struggling life and inevitable death on a miniature scale. The gentle and inexorable flow of tides and moon phases like a heartbeat more felt than heard.
Those who have shut themselves off from life come here and want to dredge away the life-giving mangroves and replace them with trucked-in sand and non-native palm trees; they wrinkle their noses at the smell of the tides and the rich silt flats and go indoors to breathe cold,conditioned air that's been breathed over and over again and again. They mow down hammocks and buttonwoods so they have a view from their windows. They come here to stay for a week every few months with their huge gas-spewing motorboats and their boomboxes and their gold chains and expensive fishing rigs.
They hate the Florida Bay for what she is; they want to make yet another Miami Beach clone out of her and chase those of us who love her for what she is out for their condos and mansions.
But there are a hundred Miami Beach clones in South Florida already. And a million beachfront condos and mansions.
Sometimes I wonder--does one have to be a jerk to be wealthy, or does being wealthy make one a jerk?
Life isn't very fair sometimes...
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