Water as A Divider: When Beaches Were Not For All

Water is the symbol of many things — renewal, rebirth, life itself. But in the Jim Crow South, it was a stark physical reminder of an enforced separation. Parting the Waters In the bleak years of segregation, Florida beaches and pools were symbols of a great divide — and of rising up through persistent struggle. By Audrey Peterman As a Jamaican woman who developed a passion for nature at the

Telling the story of a beloved bay

Florida Bay Forever harnesses the power of the narrative to protect this threatened lifeblood of the Keys. By Jacki Levine When Emma Haydocy talks about Florida Bay, the life-brimming estuary that links Everglades National Park with the Florida Keys, the Massachusetts native evokes an almost poetic vision of nature’s beauty. “There are no words that can adequately describe the experience of being out on Florida Bay when the water is glass and

Someplace so familiar

Traveling halfway around the world, this sponge diver found his home in Tarpon Springs — a vibrant seaside outpost of his native Greece. By Janet Scherberger It’s a breezy, clear-blue-sky early afternoon in Tarpon Springs and Anastasio “Taso” Karistinos is on his sponge boat, stringing up a gray tarp to protect against the sun. “I don’t need to get more tan,” he says with a broad grin, his white teeth

History unfolded as water set the course

History unfolded as water set the course Lessons abound in the stories of our state’s earliest inhabitants, as they coped with the rising seas. By Kenneth Sassaman 7032 B.C., Near Modern-Day Titusville, On Florida’s East Coast As the end of her mortal life approached, the matriarch of the clan contemplated the future of her people. The world they knew was changing. Water was on the rise, in some places faster

The TALES they TELL

From the beginning, Florida’s fish camps have connected us to the wildness, and soul, of our state. By Charlie Hailey / Photos by Aidan Hailey N ot long ago, my son and I helped clean out an abandoned fish camp near Gainesville. McGilvray’s had been closed for a decade, but it was a museum of outdoor life that still whispered the legends of fishing for speckled perch on Newnans Lake.
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