The Sewing Box and the Great Blue

By Hannah Gorski A classmate tells me she’s paddling up Salt Creek to retrieve the dead heron our class found on the last trip. My eyes shift from the paper I’m reading to squint over the harbor. I remember the bird, a Great Blue, the largest heron in North America. I had not expected that blue, tangled mass strangled by skeins of fishing line. The bird’s sodden feathers spread with

The Florida I have inside me….

A literary remembrance of Bill Belleville, whose storytelling celebrates the mystery and glory of our state’s waterways, and beckons us to go outside. By Cynthia Barnett This winter on a sunny weekday, I jostled my kayak into the warm waters of the Wekiva River in honor of Bill Belleville, one of the great chroniclers of what he called vernacular Florida—“the luxuriant particulars of nature, of culture, and of place.” Belleville,

Water as A Healing Source, In search of miracle cures

From ancient times, water has been imbued with almost magical curative powers. Taking the waters in Florida After the Civil War, visitors flocked to the state, drawn by a promise of the healing powers of the springs and the sea. By Rick Kilby Beer baron Charles D. Kaier had certainly prospered in America after he immigrated from Germany. He fought for his new country during the Civil War and, by

Water as Freedom: Fluid freedom

Whether it be an endless ocean, a meandering river, or a back country swamp, water evokes freedom for all who seek it. Finding freedom, so fluid and fleeting Florida’s waterways promise blissful release from rules and care — until one person’s liberty clashes with another’s property lines. By Thomas T. Ankersen Featured image above: Cave divers enter the labyrinth of Manatee Springs, one of the state’s first-magnitude springs, located on

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

Water as A Natural Bridge, Bonding Across the Straits of Florida

The lessons of a manatee’s journey How shared waterways bridge the divides between Florida and Cuba — for marine life and the scientists united to protect it. By Anmari Alvarez Aleman Featured image above: In April 1984, more than 20 years before this Florida manatee was spotted by Anmari Alvarez Aleman in the warm waters off of Cuba, she was photographed in Crystal River with her male calf. In 2007, she

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
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