Gliding through the Glades
By Tim Jackson and Cindy Harger/Tampa Tribune

Originally published March 27, 1996

The ``Wilderness Waterway'' is a canoe and boating trail winding for almost 100 miles through Everglades National Park. Tampa Tribune reporter Cindy Harger and photographer Tim Jackson paddled a canoe through mangrove corridors, down canopied creeks and across whitecapped bays into a part of Florida rarely seen from park boardwalks or automobile windows.

Tips for the trip


EVERGLADES CITY - Only an idiot could get lost on the Wilderness Waterway through Everglades National Park, our guidebooks said.

The 99-mile canoe and boat trail through the heart of South Florida was bristling with channel markers, and our nautical charts were accurate and up-to-date. We couldn't possibly lose our way.
Or so we thought.

We accomplished the impossible in the first 24 hours of a weeklong canoe voyage by trusting our map reading skills instead of the markers.

Our 17-foot canoe drifted on barely moving backwater, our paddles idle and our maps out of their Ziploc bags.

``Do you have any idea where we are, Cindy?''

``I think we're right here. See on the chart? We should be able to cut through this little creek to get back to the main channel.''

``That's what you said at the last six creeks.''

``Some adventurers we are, Tim. We can't go 10 miles without getting lost.''

``Well, we're no Lewis and Clark. Or Stanley and Livingstone. Burton and Speke, maybe. They got lost a lot.''

``Who?''

``Richard Burton and John Speke. The first Europeans to explore East Africa. They started out as best friends and ended up hating each other by the end of their expedition.''

``I'm not sure I like the sound of that.''

``Not to worry, Burton old girl. We'll find our way through this bloody jungle yet. I say, might I peruse the chart for a moment?''

``Certainly, Speke, old chap. Certainly. What time is sundown again?''

We set out on a Sunday to navigate 100-plus miles of the Wilderness Waterway, which winds through rivers and bays along South Florida's west coast. (To avoid rough water at one point, we took an alternate route, adding to the 99-mile trail.) The trail begins at the northern entrance of the national park in the small town of Everglades City, made famous by sport fishermen and Travis McGee mystery novels.

Destination: Flamingo, the southern tip of Florida's mainland and home of our next cold beer.

Prior to our departure, we had thought of the Everglades in terms of a freshwater swamp. The River of Grass. Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Airboats and all that.

Saw grass still grows farther inland. But the Wilderness Waterway weaves its way through a much different Everglades - a rarely seen Everglades of brackish water, mud flats and more than 20 whitecapped bays.

We saw the expected wildlife: herons and ibises in the shallows and alligators at sunset. But we also witnessed dolphins feeding at the edge of the mangroves and sharks under the dock at dawn.

Mangrove-lined river channels stretch as wide as a six-lane interstate and narrow into creeks cluttered with downed trees and overhanging limbs.

Motorboats small enough to navigate the occasionally tortuous channels can make the journey in about six hours. We planned to paddle the trail in six days, the maximum time our schedules would allow.

Expedition outfitters scoffed. By canoe, we would need at least 10 days, they said. The park rangers were every bit as skeptical, though more circuitous in voicing their doubts.

``Well, you can try it . . .,'' they said when we filed our mandatory float plan. Rangers warn canoeists that trying to navigate the entire waterway isn't for everyone, particularly not the inexperienced.

Clearly a challenge had been thrown in our faces. We would prove them wrong. After all, we weren't tourists - we were Burton and Speke.

The morning's jocular, British-accented conversation turned testy as we were forced to acknowledge we were far from the seasoned wilderness explorers we had imagined ourselves.

``Hey, Captain Speke. You sure this is right?''

``Yeah. There should be a cut on the right up here where . . . $&!!''

``What?''

``Look to the north. No, your other north.''

There, through a break in the mangrove thickets was Sunday Bay chickee, our campsite the night before and point of departure two hours earlier.


With 18 miles to paddle in six hours before sunset, finding and following the channel markers became our main concern. And there they were - reflecting brightly and right where they should be, now that we had figured out how to read the chart.

Our backs and arms ached, and the sun already had set as we neared our scheduled campsite at Lostman's Five Bay. After our morning fiasco, we felt a site called Lostman's Two would have been more appropriate. But we didn't name the sites, we just paddled to them.

We weren't sure how well the campsite was marked or if we'd be able to find it in the dark, but our worries proved unfounded.

``Hey, wait. I think there's something on the far shore. Is that . . . an outhouse?''

``Yes! I thought we were going to have to tie up to a mangrove and sleep in the canoe.''

Burton and Speke would have been proud.

For two people who would rather spend rush hour on U.S. Highway 19 than see man-made structures in the wilderness, the outhouses became unusually welcome because they were the first landmarks we would spot at each campsite.

The National Park Service provides more than 20 campsites - and accompanying outhouses - at intervals of about 10 miles throughout the Wilderness Waterway.

Some are ground sites, complete with picnic tables and docks. Because dry ground is limited, however, more than half the sites are wooden platforms built over the water. Called chickees, the covered structures confine the camper to about 100 square feet but usually allow for a cooling breeze to whisk away a few of the mosquitoes.

As our first night proved, wind and water aren't always sufficient to keep the pests at bay.

Experts say the Everglades ecosystems have 43 to 67 species of mosquitoes. Within a few hours after dusk, we felt as if we had been bitten by about 65 of them. In reality, only one of those species wastes much time on human blood - the salt marsh mosquito, a small, jet-black fiend with gator-size jaws.

Eau de Muskol, Essence of Off and L'air de Skin-So-Soft became our perfume and after-shave for the rest of the trip.

We sat on a dry portion of the dock gazing up into a sky crowded with stars. Somewhere in the darkness, we could hear three porpoises making their way slowly upstream with the turning tide. We could hear them exhale as they surfaced until they rounded a bend in the river minutes later.

``I'd like to fall asleep out here, looking at the stars. But the mosquitoes would enjoy that too much.''

``I wish I could remember that line about `lights shining in the dome of night' or `the night being a starry dome' or something like that. It's from the `Rubaiyat.' Or maybe it's from a Joni Mitchell song.''


While we reveled in imagining ourselves to be explorers discovering Florida's backcountry for the first time, we were by no means alone in our adventure.

The park logs more than 1 million visitors annually, 14,700 of them traveling into the backcountry, which includes the Wilderness Waterway.

We passed scores of fishermen and boaters cruising the easily accessible upper and lower reaches of the waterway, but in the center, even other canoeists were sparse. The center has such stretches as ``The Nightmare,'' eight miles passable only at high tide.

Our experiences gave us an immediate bond with other waterway canoeists, despite our differences.

There was the Yet-a-Hey (``what the hell'' in a Sioux dialect), a canoe so comically overloaded with gear that the man at the helm could barely see the woman in front.

Then there was the stealth canoe, owned by a well-equipped duo of professional canoeists who glided effortlessly past us with the help of strangely bent, featherweight paddles.

Finally, there was Solo Joe, as we called him. Out for 10 days, he had difficulty fighting the winds and whitecaps alone but caught up to us at Flamingo anyway by hitching a tow from a passing houseboat. There he was, waving from the deck, smiling and sipping a cold one.

We didn't blame him. A 20-knot wind can be an ominous thing, especially when you're paddling directly into it. During the last two days of our six-day trip, a southeasterly wind and an outgoing tide combined to create whitecaps as high as the sides of our canoe. A mere 12 miles took us nearly as long to complete as our 18-mile stints of the previous days.

To keep our spirits up and focus on something other than monotonous mangrove coasts, we resorted to singing aloud.

By relying on the refined Victorian tastes and delicate sensibilities of our role models Burton and Speke, we settled on a British favorite, which set a rhythmic paddling pace.

The rest of the way to the Flamingo boat dock, the mangroves were filled with the sounds of Monty Python's ``Lumberjack Song'' about cross-dressing woodsmen.

The herons weren't pleased.

TIPS FOR THE TRIP
GETTING STARTED

RENTING CANOES WHAT NOT TO FORGET FOR MORE INFORMATION