A Corridor Runs Through It

Imagine yourself as a modern-day alligator in central Florida, where 12 acres of wild land is sacrificed to development every hour. This is a story about what happens when the South’s creatures no longer have room to move — and about a project aimed at preserving the few corridors that connect what remains of the wild land.

Driving eastbound on Interstate 4 toward Orlando, you pass RV dealers, strip malls, gas stations, fast food, and apartment complexes. Occasionally, you glimpse bright-green bahiagrass pastures, cypress domes, and pine flats peppered with palmettos.

Florida is not the one without the other, but by all appearances the one — developed, urbanized, gray — is overtaking the other, wild, natural, and green.

I’m on my way to meet the Florida Wildlife Corridor team as it prepares to depart on its third expedition in six years, all of them aimed at finding and documenting how Florida’s wildlife makes its way from one patch of wild land to another amid the state’s unceasing development. This weeklong expedition, dubbed Heartland to Headwaters, will take off from the headwaters of the Everglades and trek northwest toward the Green Swamp — Florida’s two largest wetland systems. It will travel a thin thread of natural lands between the sprawling metropolises of Orlando and Tampa, a literal corridor of ecosystems critical to the state’s future.

As I consider the growing suburbanization of this area, I remember the eighth grade, when I spent a week at art camp in New Hampshire. After the campers, mainly from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, found out I was from Florida, they surrounded and barraged me with questions: Is it just a big swamp down there? Are there alligators in your backyard?

This exercise was repeated, with a distinct variation, 15 years later in graduate school in New Jersey. My peers, upon learning I was from Florida, asked: Is it just a bunch of snowbirds down there? Are there golf courses everywhere?

Children are naturally prone to fantasies of swamps and gators, not snowbirds and golf courses, of course, but the point holds. In just 15 years, the perception of Florida had shifted — from a place of dark, primeval swamps inhabited by dinosaur-sized alligators, to a neatly manicured land of golf courses traveled by frail, slow-moving snowbirds.

Even in my own Floridian imagination, my home state has shifted from wild green to lifeless gray. Florida is no longer “dotted” with development, but with wilderness. Come to Florida, the advertisements say, there are gators, tropical flowers, wide open oceans. BUT DON’T WORRY, they can’t reach you from your air-conditioned hotel room, restaurant, Disney vacation. Come and look! You definitely don’t have to touch.

This is Florida’s new reality. The stats confirm it: Every day, 1,000 new people move to the state, and each hour, 12 acres of land is developed.

Joe Guthrie met Carlton Ward while studying bears in South Florida at Archbold Biological Station. Joe was recording the travel patterns of GPS-collared Florida black bears. His research ultimately became part of his master’s thesis — “Modeling Road Crossing and Movement Characteristics of the Black Bear in South Central Florida,” for the Forestry Department of the University of Kentucky. Carlton, a well-known conservation photographer, was on the Biological Station’s Buck Island Ranch gathering images for his book Florida Cowboys: Keepers of the Last Frontier. Carlton had shot conservation photography internationally, and particularly in West-Central Africa, but had recently shifted his attention and efforts to Florida, noticing the urgent and growing conservation issues in his home state.

The year they met, 2006, Florida was at a new height of development; money was flying and the building industry was booming. In those days, Joe and Carlton’s discussions weaved through the myriad of conservation issues confronting Florida — and how they could get involved. One idea kept coming up, based on a project Carlton knew from his time in Gabon: the MegaTransect Project. The project was the brainchild of conservationist and explorer Mike Fay, who hiked 3,200 miles through the Congo Basin of Africa over 455 days. Throughout the trek Fay documented vegetation, wildlife, and ecosystems. After the expedition, Fay presented his findings to the Gabonese president, which ultimately led to the creation of 13 new National Parks.

Joe and Carlton decided they needed to do that for Florida. With development ever encroaching and fracturing Florida’s natural areas, the idea of an expedition that could draw the public’s attention and imagination to a corridor connecting all Florida’s wild places became a fixation.

Years passed after those first conversations, but time provided space for their idea to become more concrete. In the intervening years, Mallory Dimmit, a childhood friend of Carlton’s from Clearwater, became an integral partner in their conversations. Mallory had recently finished her Masters of Environmental Management in Environmental Economics and Policy at Duke University and was working with Carlton on a nonprofit endeavor he started, The Legacy Institute for Nature & Culture. LINC’s mission: Use the arts to help advocate for the protection of Florida’s natural and cultural heritage.

Joe continued his research on a small bear population in Glades and Highlands counties, attempting to understand how these bears managed to live in an area so heavily affected by human development. One of the bears Joe was tracking, a male given the colorful name M34, went on a journey of nearly 500 miles — wandering from Lake Placid through the Everglades Headwaters, then toward Celebration, a planned community outside of Disney World. M34 bumped up against I-4 many times but was never able to cross; he eventually made his way back south to the ranches and natural land of the Lake Wales Ridge area. 

M34’s problem is a common issue for animals throughout the state of Florida. Growing development and infrastructure across the state means isolated habitats, and there are scant pathways connecting these wild areas.

M34 served as the inspiration for the Florida Wildlife Corridor team’s first expedition in 2012, a 100-day, 1,000-mile trek from the Everglades to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southern Georgia. The expedition sought to highlight a statewide mosaic of lands that connected Florida’s fragmented ecosystems — a network of wildlife corridors. The expedition team consisted of Joe, Carlton, and Mallory, who at the time was working in Telluride, Colorado, for the Nature Conservancy. 

The team hiked, biked, and paddled across pine flats, marshland, swamps, and waterways to prove it wasn’t too late to protect a continuous stretch of natural land throughout the state.

In 2015 the team regrouped for another 1,000-mile expedition. That time, they bisected the original route, beginning in the Everglades’ headwaters in Central Florida and traveling westward to the Gulf Coast and across the Panhandle to Gulf Islands National Seashores in Alabama. The dual expeditions resulted in award-winning documentary films, coverage in local and national media, some great photography, and two books.

And all of it told the same story: The treasures of wild Florida — landscapes, waterways, flora, and fauna — will soon disappear without drastic efforts to save them.

The Florida Wildlife Corridor’s 2018 Headwaters to Heartland expedition launches from The Nature Conservancy’s Disney Wilderness Preserve in Poinciana, about 30 miles south of Orlando. I drive and watch dozens of birds cross a baby blue sky — vultures, ibis, wood storks, osprey — casting their shadows over forest and strip mall. The birds reveal a reality: Florida, from Key West to Pensacola, is a constant clash between the urban and the wild. Though a bird’s habitat is no less affected, with its gift of flight it often escapes what animals condemned to water and land deal with daily — insufficient connectivity.

The Disney Wilderness Preserve is 11,500 acres situated in the northern part of the larger Everglades ecosystem, an area known as the Everglades Headwaters. The DWP land was once a cattle ranch headed towards residential and commercial development when the Walt Disney Company, working with The Nature Conservancy and other partners, bought the land in the early 1990s — largely for mitigation purposes. After the purchase, The Nature Conservancy quickly went to work, restoring 3,500 acres of wetlands on the property.

Soon after I arrive at DWP’s Learning Center, I run into Joe Guthrie. Joe and I met in 2006 in Lexington, Kentucky, when we were working on our graduate degrees at the University of Kentucky’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. We quickly connected over a love of Florida and have kept in touch since. Joe appears flustered and reveals things are much in flux. While the expedition is literally about to take off, certain plans remain up in the air.

After lunch and a short talk from the expedition members and some guests, everyone present joins the team for a short hike to Lake Russell to officially begin the expedition.

On the hike out to Lake Russell I’m joined by a woman who introduces herself as an environmental economist. Self-assured, she goes straight to the reality of environmentalism as she sees it: “You can’t just protect bunnies and bugs. You have to understand that money dictates everything, and from there move to protect bunnies and bugs.” Another hiker in his early 40s, walking alongside, nods in assent.

The pine flat landscape turns quickly to cypress swamp, then a floodplain, which opens to the great Lake Russell, the terminus of Reedy Creek — a pathway of the expedition and part of the proposed corridor track. Wind gusts whip Lake Russell — a major storm is moving across the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida — and I wonder if the environmental economist’s realism is the only vision for conservation in Florida.

Joe Guthrie has a crowd gathered around him as he picks up a southern cricket frog from sand beside a cypress knee and speaks about the “ecotone” — the transitional area between two ecosystems, like we just walked through. Joe’s green eyes and floppy hair give an air of aloofness, which hides a hyper-awareness of the world around him. As soon as he puts the frog down, he points to a dead gator washed up near the shore. He tells those gathered it was likely killed by a larger gator.

After thirty minutes, the crowd thins to head back home, and the expedition team begins to prepare for the trip. They are being accompanied by a film crew who produced the PBS documentary “Forgotten Coast,” which followed the team’s 2015 expedition. There are four members of the film team — Eric Bendick, Danny Schmidt, Phil Baribeau, and Dawson Dunning. Swift, gray-blue clouds pass over the lake and portend the storm lurking in the Gulf. The weather radar on my phone shows the weather system stretching from central Florida to Canada, and blinks red for the tornado warnings across the state. 

The pending tempest seems not to bother the wildlife. A great egret cruises indifferently above Lake Russell while two butterflies dance over the shore. Twenty yards out, three gators consider the ruckus on the shore, their eyes and snout skimming the water’s surface.

Expedition day two along Reedy Creek

The film crew has decided to get some shots of the expedition team on their paddleboards. This is when I’m read the Riot Act — I’m allowed to join the expedition as long as I remain off camera. I get the feeling the camera crew would have preferred I left with everyone else, but I’m here, so they deal with me. I get in my kayak and explore the lake while they get their shots.

From the middle of the lake, I scan the shore of impenetrable cypress and tupelo. In the distance I hear the conk-la-reeeeee of red-winged blackbirds. Even though the wind is picking up in gusts over 20 mph, the avian world is out in force. Wood storks slowly glide across the sky, and over the woods I catch a swallow-tailed kite. Above me an osprey shoots up into windy skies; suddenly stops, then dives to the earth. I watch the osprey play for 10 wondrous minutes.

When I get back to shore, the team and film crew are making a plan for what remains of the day. Numerous issues have come up, obviously the weather, but there is also the seasonally low Reedy Creek, obstructed with downed trees and vegetation. With such conditions, the team settles on hiking through the swamp surrounding Reedy Creek to Pleasant Hill Road, a major obstacle of the corridor. Tomorrow will be an early day on the water to film the mouth and stretch of Reedy Creek off Lake Russell, followed by hiking the swamp on the north side of Pleasant Hill Road. The creek’s conditions won’t allow the team to paddle it right now; instead, they face a laborious trudge through dense swamp.

We change from bathing suits to long pants and rain jackets, and load our backpacks with water and equipment. It’s 6 p.m., and the skies are darker than usual, the storm now hammering the west coast of Florida.

The swamp along Reedy Creek is relatively dry. The trunks of trees throughout the swamp bear the marks of both seasonal flooding and drought. In a month, when the summer rains begin, the waters will quickly rise to the higher water lines. For now, though, the ground is a mucky labyrinth of dead vegetation, fallen trees, and downed branches. The humidity here is palpable; it presses against you, as does the heat. 

This is no place for claustrophobics. But of all the landscapes I’ve had the good fortune to explore, none makes me feel as alive as a swamp does. I don’t mean exuberance or joy. It is a sense of life fed by ever-present danger. Swamps are marked by death — all the rotting organic matter that mars its floor and gives it life — and by risk — every nook and cranny could hide snakes, gators, and more. A swamp jars you from default, autopilot amble and into an alertness of a dark, living world around you. Rilke’s words reverberate as a mantra for this wooden morass: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.”

Large cypress trees stand along the edge of Lake Russell at The Nature Conservancy’s Disney Wilderness Preserve. Near suburban Kissimmee, this is one of the last undeveloped lakes in central Florida.  Restoring water flow south from Lake Okeechobee into the Shark River Slough will allow rain falling in Lake Russell to trace a more natural course from these headwaters all the way south to Florida Bay.

Within moments, it begins to rain. I now see the realities of documentary filming; you don’t simply go out and hike. There are many considerations: getting the right shot, keeping equipment dry, making sure to capture scenery while also telling the story. These all become impediments to movement; land that normally takes one hour to cover takes two or three.

The swamp makes no adjustment to a film crew’s needs. Deep into our hike, half the group steps unknowingly over a cottonmouth — a venomous pit viper usually found around water, also known as the water moccasin. We walk through a clearing where a juvenile night heron is perched on a fallen tree, and again some crew step over a cottonmouth, this one more than double the size of the last — earning gasps from these seasoned explorers. Snakes remind you to pay attention to where your feet are headed.

Two hours have passed since we first entered the swamp, and we begin to notice a slight incline in the land. It’s not the topography, but the vegetation — a shift from the swamp’s wet, cypress-strewn habitat to a drier land marked first by sabal palms, then palmettos, and finally by oak trees. As we make our way through the changing flora, the sound of civilization returns — the drone of traffic from Pleasant Hill Road. Just as entering the swamp seemed to happen all at once, so does re-entering the developed world. It is loud, bright, grating. I catch the glare of headlights, the reddish haze of a fast-food spot, the domed lights of a gas station. Cars fly by, loud and obnoxious. Something inside me yearns to turn around and go back to the silence of the swamp. 

I was gone for a couple of hours, but it felt like days.

The plan for the first night is to camp on DWP land, but with the storms and tornado warnings, the team makes a last-minute decision to crash in a hotel and get some dry sleep before heading into the woods for a week. I stay in a room with Joe, and after cleaning up — the shower feels like a miracle — we talk about the expedition and its purpose.

I’ve been wondering if the outdoor adventurism of the expedition overshadows the urgency of the need to act, to stop these wild areas from disappearing before our eyes. I ask Joe his thoughts. He acknowledges this possibility, but notes that without the social media and documentaries, folks wouldn’t know about fractured landscapes and the value of wildlife corridors in Florida. 

He’s right. I know dozens of people not typically concerned with conservation issues who not only know about the Florida Wildlife Corridor, but also follow its work with great interest. The question, then, is how can people move from education to pivotal action? Joe is big on the need for political action, saying that’s where the real work gets done. Earlier, he and Carlton had highlighted many of the important steps on conservation matters the Florida government had taken recently, but both acknowledged much more was needed.

The environmental economist’s words from earlier come back to my mind as I crawl into bed. Getting businesses on board with a pro-environmental agenda might be a helpful step, but if corporations won’t make the drastic changes and sacrifices needed for a course correction, they’ll simply do what’s best for business. That’s realism, but I can’t help but see this approach as anything other than self-defeating, just a pragmatic way to delay ecological death.

I doze off thinking the only thing that can save wild Florida, or any wilderness, is dogged persistence toward a new reality, where wild things and places hold agency and demand our care, practicalities and excuses be damned.

Carlton, always the boy scout, knocks on our door at 5:45 a.m. We’re on the road at 6:20, no breakfast, driving back to Disney Wildlife Preserve. Driving down Poinciana Boulevard, we pass hundreds of cars heading north, likely to jobs in Orlando. In the soft darkness of dawn, headlights and brake lights look like red and white ants, marching. We pass two high schools, many subdivisions, gas stations, strip malls, and forests cleared for future development.

The division between wild areas and urbanization is so clear-cut here, and the pressure upon the land is intense. How much longer before it’s all development, before all that’s green fades to gray?

Suburban development pushes into primary panther habitat on the east edge of Naples, Florida. Florida currently is losing 12 acres per hour of rural and natural habitat to development to accommodate the 1,000 people per day who are moving to the state.

At Lake Russell, the sun is rising over the tree line, casting a soft orange aura over the entire lake. The film crew is already here, setting up and getting shots. Two drones cut through the orange sky, preparing for aerial shots of the mouth of Reedy Creek. It’s unexpectedly chilly.

The team sets out on paddleboards across Lake Russell. The film crew trails behind in kayaks with one crew member shooting from a drone. The weather today is markedly different, less wind, a clear sky.

After a few moments, I slide my kayak into the lake to follow everyone from a distance, staying outside the frame of the drone’s camera. The base of the trees along the shore are ringed with various colors, from dark brown to milky white to black. I scan upward to the highest water line and wonder if it’s from Hurricane Irma last fall.

The morning light at the mouth of Reedy Creek is breathtaking, and life explodes from it. Ospreys, pileated woodpeckers, anhinga, egrets all fly across the creek’s mouth (which feels more river than creek). A handful of ibis wade behind me, squawking. The warm morning light melts over trees lining the bank and aquatic vegetation dotting the creek. Fish burst to the water’s surface, little ripples marking their breakfast exploits. Multiple bromeliads hide high in the cypress trees; their bright violet-pink flower spikes look like some wild headdress or a rooster’s comb.

Looking upward for flowers and birds, I nearly miss a baby gator popping up on water lettuce next to me. Curious, it follows me for a few feet as my kayak struggles through the vegetation. I keep an eye out for mom, who wouldn’t appreciate how close I am to her hatchling  — I could reach out and grab the little guy. Every so often it looks up at me, its closed mouth mimicking a playful grin.

Grizzly Creek Films crew members paddle behind the expedition team along Reedy Creek.

A few hundred yards up Reedy Creek, the vegetation and debris get too thick to continue, so we turn back towards Lake Russel. On the way out, Phil — one of the film crew — gets a drone stuck in some Spanish moss hanging from a cypress. The expensive flying camera dangles from the moss, two stories over the water. We get out of our kayaks and paddleboards to determine how to dislodge the drone without it getting wet. Carlton has a push pole he uses on his paddleboard, which he gives to Eric Bendick. Eric hits the bottom of the drone a few times but can’t shake it loose, so Carlton gives him a Go-Pro attached to what looks like a selfie-stick that Eric connects to the push pole.

During the commotion, a wood stork flies overhead and pulls a slow, graceful circle before landing on a cypress in the middle of the creek. Wood storks have black, featherless, reptilian heads, with beady black eyes and long, curved black bills. Their bodies hunch over when they’re not flying, giving them the look of cartoon villains. This curious stork watches us below, ready to let loose a nefarious cackle. The sun moves further along the day’s arc, and it begins to warm up. Another wood stork lands near the mouth of the river and nearby a few gators on the bank warm themselves. Finally, Eric swings the pole/camera contraption and frees the drone from the moss. It falls and is caught by Carlton, who is balancing on a paddleboard with Eric. Everyone cheers.

As we get back to our kayaks and paddleboards, Joe, Mallory, and I talk about the wood stork. Joe mentions they are closer to vultures, among the fauna of Florida, than to the wading birds with whom they are routinely seen. Mallory, smiling, says they look like dinosaurs. Another one comes our way, slows down and extends its stilt-thin legs as it approaches a branch — something egrets and other waders don’t do. Joe quips, “It’s putting down its landing gear.”

By the time we get back from Lake Russel, it’s nearly noon. The expedition team, Florida Wildlife Corridor’s executive director Lindsay Cross, and Alex Morrison — a science communicator and researcher serving as the support driver — gather in the parking lot of the Disney Wildlife Preserve to pack gear for the next few nights. The team will be camping with little, if any, interaction or assistance. The film crew is back at their trailer, packing for the next few days, too.

We eat lunch, a mix-match of picnic and backcountry meal, in the parking lot. Afterwards, the team will hike the Reedy Creek floodplain just north of Pleasant Hill Road, continuing yesterday’s swamp hike.

I ask Lindsay if she can follow me to the Osceola Environmental Center, so I can drop off my car. The Center is where I’ll break off from today’s hike to head back home to Tampa.

We visited this large cypress tree in the Reedy Creek Swamp during the Heartland to Headwaters Expedition that ended on Earth Day. This scene was wild but intense development was less than a mile away.

In a Dollar General parking lot off of Pleasant Hill Road, Carlton, imitating an old-time pioneer, declares, “We begin our route at the Dollar General!” A juvenile red-tailed hawk and red-shouldered hawk fly over us. The red-shouldered hawk lets out a single, piercing cry.

As we’re preparing to leave, a car swerves into the parking lot, a man jumps out and runs over to our group. Patrick is in his 20s, covered in tattoos, and as friendly as can be. He’s a local and saw all the kayaks on the trailer. He excitedly tells us the different ways to get to Reedy Creek. 

“I’ve lived here my whole life!” he exclaims. Patrick accesses Reedy Creek through the woods abutting his mom’s backyard, an untamed world inhabited by wild hogs, turkeys, and bowfin (alligator gars). He shares story after story; one is of a stolen car hidden deep beneath the tenacious growth of Reedy Creek swamp.

“Me and my friends are wild boys,” Patrick continues. “We go bowfin fishing, bass fishing. I’ve seen everything, water moccasins … everything.” Patrick was born in 1988. Carlton asks how things have changed since he was a child. Patrick says Pleasant Hill Road used to be “one lane up and one lane down,” and there were no stores. 

“The traffic kills everyone, no one wants to deal with it,” he laments. He decries all the change he’s witnessed: “It’s spreading out … people disrespect the wildlife.” Patrick points to a sign that bears the omnipresent logo of Avatar, an area real estate developer.

Mallory, Carlton, and Joe cross Pleasant Hill Road, stopping and starting like squirrels, dodging cars, exhaling deeply when they finally make the other side. A drone films overhead. They’ve done this routine many times — crossing roads, highways, and Interstates — all to illustrate the real danger wildlife faces. One of the leading causes of death for the endangered Florida panther is collision with vehicles. In 2014, 25 panthers were killed while crossing the road (their total population is estimated to be around 200 adults). For wildlife in the Everglades Headwaters near and around Lake Russell trying to head north toward the land along Reedy Creek and beyond (e.g. the Green Swamp), the only choice is to roll the dice and cross the chaos of Pleasant Hill Road. The smell of the swamp’s security comes from four lanes and a median away.

Danny, Phil, and I follow, making the shoulder and sliding down the steep hill to enter the swamp. In the enclosed swamp the sun’s heat bakes like an oven. The swamp floor is littered with browning water-lettuce pods and empty shells, mostly from invasive, non-native apple snails. Soon after entering the swamp, we come across a family of pileated woodpeckers playing . The large-bodied birds dart up and down a tree. Their red tufts of hair draw the eye like a neon sign in the swamp.

We trek a meandering course, constantly adjusting for downed trees and impenetrable thickets. The heat today is strong, I’m covered in sweat in minutes. Yesterday we didn’t hear the road until we came upon it, today we can’t escape its sounds.

An hour into the hike we hear the faint sound of a human voice. We all stop for a second, wondering if someone else is in the swamp. We keep walking until Danny says, “That’s from Home Depot or Lowes. I heard OUTSIDE LAWN & GARDEN.” Carlton checks the GPS on his phone; there’s a Lowes just east of us. In the middle of dense swamp, Reedy Creek to our left, we can hear a loudspeaker from Lowes. The wild-urban interface is razor-thin here. In addition to the geographic pressures of urbanization, wildlife must deal, too, with the growing encroachment of sound.

We move closer to Reedy Creek and notice the whole creek is covered in water hyacinth — some in bloom. There is not a speck of water uncovered by hyacinth; it would have been hell trying to paddle through this section of the creek. About 15 yards up the creek a giant gator, still as a log, sits sunning on the bank while two snowy egrets and a single great blue heron perch on limbs, watching the water.

We continue our slow march through the swamp, winding around thick areas and pausing occasionally for a drink or to check our coordinates. Around 2:30 p.m., we stop and Carlton notes we’re at the narrowest stretch of wild area — the smallest bottleneck — along the entire route.

Where we are, just north of the Pleasant Hill Road bridge overpass, the corridor is 450 meters wide, or about .28 miles. If one accounts for the edge effects (noise, light pollution, other disturbances) you lose about 60 to 100 meters of habitat on either side. Depending on what disturbances are present, there could be only 200 to 250 meters of interior forest conditions in which wildlife could move with the least amount of interruption.

Joe explains, “Animals in this area are never fully away from threats and noise. When it floods in summer, there may be no area to cross.”

“This isn’t what you want in a corridor,” Carlton adds. “So much potential for interaction with development. Think black bears and trash cans.”

Mallory points to a large drainage pipe left behind by a construction crew: “There has been some management work done to keep flow-ways open, especially around the bridge.” This isn’t just an issue for wildlife, either. Joe adds that the lack of natural land here means less area to absorb surface runoff, chemical fertilizer, and rainwater. 

Humans neglect how swamps are important to their own lives. Swamps can support urban areas like nearby Tampa and Orlando. They store flood water, provide fresh air, absorb pollutants, and improve water clarity. A wild Florida is as essential to humans as it is to wildlife.

We reach the Osceola County Environmental Center a little after 3 p.m. The Center has a boardwalk going through the forest, around the swamp, and out to Reedy Creek. We take it and make our way to the water. The creek is clear here, no hyacinth. There are dozens of gators, several of them over six feet long. I see an anhinga on its nest. Alex the support driver tells us she saw otters playing a few moments earlier. I look out and see great egrets, snowy egrets, more anhinga. Two giant gar cruise by under the dock lookout. A green anole lies on a cypress limb, its lime green body shining like some small, tropical beacon. And down the boardwalk, a gray catbird sits on the walkway’s rail.

Joe and I head towards the Environmental Center. It’s hard to complain about being tired, about the damn heat, about the sweat and dirt, when you’ve seen all this wildlife. I ask him how many miles they have left. About 44, he answers. I get to the parking lot, change clothes, and give the others my leftover food. We say goodbyes. I get in my car and head back to Tampa.

Earlier, before we crossed Pleasant Hill Road to hike the swamp’s northern stretch, I had waited on the team in a Racetrak parking lot. I silently watched people pulling in and out of the gas station, listened to the cars driving along Pleasant Hill Road, and thought about what the Corridor team is trying to accomplish. The group pulled up next door at the Dollar General parking lot, and I walked over to meet them.

As I made my way over, I noticed a drainage ditch between the gas station and the road. The ditch’s steep banks dropped 15 feet to a small bit of stagnant, dark water. In the middle was a four-foot gator. The gator was surrounded by trash — food wrappers, beer cans, plastic bags. Gators have existed on this continent for 8 million years. I wondered if this was Florida’s future — the last remaining wildlife confined to tiny habitats, surrounded by trash, forgotten by the world.

And just as I laid eyes on the gator, a driver slammed on his horn after being cut off. The gator whipped around and disappeared into a culvert. I was struck by a profound sense of sadness then, a sense it was all too late, that nothing worthwhile could be done. But I looked up from the empty ditch and saw this team of explorers and documentarians, devoting time to call attention to these issues, to tell people like me it’s not too late.

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