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The Urban Jungle
To explore this greener, un-Botoxed side, I tag along with my friend Mary Rose, a guide with Miami-Dade Parks EcoAdventures, an organization that gives naturalist-led tours throughout the Miami area. In the five years that I’ve visited Miami, I’ve done everything from netting pufferfish with a bunch of seven-year-olds at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center to canoeing a few kilometres by moonlight across Biscayne Bay to Chicken Key. With only the sounds of the water sloshing against the shore, the fire crackling and our own voices, we roasted hot dogs and s’mores over a campfire and discussed the key’s history of environmental devastation (like trashings during midnight beach parties) and rehabilitation (coastal plants and native mangroves are back in force). Take a 90-minute drive outside an average North American city, and all you’ll see are suburbs and bedroom communities. Here a short trip takes us into the wilderness: the 720,000-acre Big Cypress National Preserve. Squelching along the Florida Trail, we venture into a shin-deep bog in the Everglades. A great blue heron flies ahead of us, while we meander through tangles of shimmering Spanish moss. All around us are spindly cypress trees whose tufts of spiky grey-green leaves appear to have sprung whole from the mind of Dr. Seuss. Swamp trompers come here hoping for a rare glimpse of the endangered Florida panther. (There are only about 50 left in this part of the continent.) Just beneath the surface of the water are scores of black, rubbery American alligators, their deceptively unassuming dark eyes checking out the scene. There are also native cocoa plums and coffee plants with edible berries. And 269 species of birds live in the trees, including the black-and-white anhingas that perch majestically on branches to dry their massive wings after fishing the swamp. Limestone boulders shade bromeliads and orchids, not to mention rattlesnakes and otters. Driving back, we take a detour down Virginia Key. Designated the “coloureds only” beach in the pre-civil rights era, it was left mostly undeveloped for decades as the rest of Miami boomed. A few wrong turns leads us, eventually, to Shrimper’s Lagoon, where we stop at Jimbo’s, a shrimp shack-turned-beer garden that’s decorated with Airstream trailers, girlie posters and bits of colourful fisherman’s kitsch. (Flipper and Creature from the Black Lagoon were filmed here.) The smell – think smoked fish – is pure Florida. But enjoy a $2 can of Budweiser and a game of bocce while you can; more than once, city officials angling for more profitable ventures have tried to boot out owner James “Jimbo” Luznar. |
