Laura and I set off yesterday from my uncle’s house on the retirement coast (the Gulf Coast, for anyone who’s never been there) of Florida bound for the Everglades, I imagined the same Everglades everyone does—stillwater swamps, alligators, wading birds, cypress trees, maybe a manatee or two. We’d canoe around in the swamps for a few hours, ooh and aah at gators and manatees and camp at a drive-in site in the national park. The next day, if we were lucky, we’d look up a cheap airboat ride from a good ol‘ boy. It would be an Everglades swamp experience.
When we arrived at the Everglades National Park Gulf Coast visitor center, though, things began changing drastically. First, there was no campground in the park. “The nearest one is up the road a piece—Seminole Collier State Park,” said the friendly ranger who, unbeknownst to any of us at the time, would go on to win the Understatement of the Year Award. That meant we’d probably paddle up to the quickly approaching sunset (three hours from now) and then drive to the state park to blunder around in the dark setting up our tent, searching for firewood, cooking dinner, etc. But there was another option—“backcountry” camping in the Everglades. We would simply have to paddle out to one of the “keys” on the little nautical chart, set up camp there and paddle back sometime tomorrow, Christmas Eve.
Before we knew it, we’d made a decision and were loading our gear into an 80-lb. aluminum canoe. The ranger read us the list of rules for island camping. One of his checkmarks said, “Bring bug spray.” “The mosquitoes shouldn’t be a problem now that it’s the dry season, but the no-see-ums could cause you a little trouble,” said the ranger. We had bug spray, but as he ticked off the rest of the list, it was clear we weren’t quite prepared for the coming endeavor.
“There are plenty of raccoons, and they’re hungry, too. We recommend a hard container wrapped with bungees.” Shoot, all we have are plastic bags. And besides, how the hell did those raccoons get out on the island in the first place?
“We recommend at least a gallon of water per person, per day.” Hmmm…well, maybe 3 liters will do us both through tomorrow.
“Try to time your trip to use the tides to your advantage.” We didn’t know it then, but that one would prove to be the kicker.
“You should really buy a nautical map so ya don’t get lost out there.” Why don’t we just sneak a digital photograph of one, instead?
Nevermind all that, we had our plan. The seven-mile trip to Picnic Key would start in the wide, coastal Chokoloskee Bay, wind into the narrow boating channel of Indian Key Pass past mangrove covered islands and take us out into the Gulf of Mexico, where we’d head north around one more island and land on the beach. No sweat.
Paddling west across the bay proved no trouble. As we plied the waters toward the Gulf, Laura asked if we’d be able to find Picnic Key, as islands seemed indistinguishable from points, and bays identical to passages. “No problem,” I said. “What are there, 10,000 islands? Ha!” The water was calm in the bay, and we were in good spirits, ready to see some dolphins and manatees.
As we entered the boating channel, though, our paddles grew suddenly heavy, and our progress ground nearly to a halt. Maybe we’d made a navigational error and had somehow ended up at the mouth of a river. However, as we sized up the situation, and I consulted the digital photograph of the nautical chart, it became evident that this was, indeed, the boating channel and the source of the powerful current was the incoming tide. You see, the geography of Chokoloskee Bay describes that of a huge, 20 square mile bathtub, with the narrow passage of Indian Key Pass (our route, naturally) as one of its few drains. Halfway through the pass, we miraculously found an eddy behind an island, and pulled in to conduct a sober meeting. We decided, though neither of us seemed entirely convinced, that we were too committed to turn back. So, with jaws set in steely determination, we drifted back into the current and wildly paddled. Three hours later, just before sunset, we landed on the beach at Picnic Key.
Things were looking up. The sand beach was a fine, velvety white flour. The sunset loomed large in front of us, filling up our view as if it was intended for us. A couple hundred yards down the beach, a fisherman had stepped from a postcard and was now picturesquely fly fishing hip-deep in the surf. The clouds of mid-afternoon were clearing up, promising a starry night. And then the no-see-ums found us. They bit and we slapped. We scratched and they bit. We covered our arms and legs. And they still bit. Dozens of them at a time, promising welts for weeks to come. We ran.
We set up the tent and Laura dove inside. I passed her vitals—camera, wine, Oreos, pillow, sleeping pads—and jumped in with her. It was stifling, what with the rain fly thrown over top (no-see-ums can get through screen netting, you see) and the heat and humidity already high. We were tired, and quite frankly, scared to go back out into the swarming cloud of insects. So we holed up in the tent for the next fourteen hours, save for one brief foray outside to clean up the gear we’d left haphazardly strewn across the beach (high tide has a way of relieving unprepared campers of their gear in the middle of the night). No dinner, no wine. Just uncomfortable, fitful sleep fully clothed on top of two sleeping pads and sharing a pillow.
In between bouts of sweaty sleep, I privately wondered who gave this island its unlikely name. Whoever the smart aleck was, he was no doubt chuckling to himself right now, asleep in some absurdly plush feather bed with the cool breeze of air conditioning lightly tickling his smiling lips.
When I finally worked up the nerve to venture out and clean up our gear sometime after midnight, the stars shone brightly above our little beach site, and the glassy calm sea merged with the sky to form one big, seamless black canvas. It was breathtakingly beautiful…until the no-see-ums found us again. We must've reeked from our earlier exertions, because it didn’t take them long, four minutes tops. But the view was enough to partially justify, in my mind, our exhausting battle with the tide.
At sunrise, we haphazardly (and with dramatic zest, I might add) picked up the whole tent and all our gear and pitched it into the canoe in our fervor to escape the bugs. We paddled hard until we were at last free of the swarms. In the flaming light of morning, we knifed through the relatively calm waters of the outer bays past feeding pelicans and meditating egrets. Hitting the channel confirmed what we'd already read in the tide charts—the tide was flowing out, and we’d again be pitted against its current. For the next three hours, we struggled mightily, as if paddling upstream at the brink of Niagara Falls. Once or twice Laura grew tired and took a break, and, despite my paddling quickly with powerful, full body strokes, we sat dead in the water. "Please don't stop paddling," I cried gravely, as though our lives depended on it. Above our heads, vultures began circling and huge saltwater crocodiles tied each others bibs on shore. But we valiantly pressed on. When we finally made Chokoloskee Bay, and the current eased up again, we went completely slack in our seats. We were beaten—shoulders sore, backs stiff, hands raw.
Rubbing our necks and setting our paddles down for the first time in hours, Laura spied two dolphins a couple hundred yards out in the bay. We paddled within feet of the frolicking porpoises. Their skin looked like rubber as they surfaced nearby, their coal-black eyes peeking out of the water to inspect us. When we drew too near, the dolphins took a long turn underwater, surfacing twenty feet away on the opposite side of the canoe. They swam off into the morning, and the only sound we heard on the bay was the sneezing of the dolphins’ blowholes.
Upon landing, we exchanged pleasantries with an unlucky family who was gaily, and quite naively, setting out to spend Christmas on a bug-infested key. We wished them good luck, returned our canoes, honored our ranger friend with the Understatement of the Year Award, and drove wearily off in Lucy.
