1. Breaking the Silence of Tea
“It smells like eggs,” I say.
And it does. Rotten eggs. The heat doesn’t make the scent any more pleasant. It’s
only eight in the morning and already boiling hot, accompanied by the kind of humidity
that gives one the sensation of breathing warm liquid. The bugs don’t even seem to notice
the several layers of insect repellant coating our bodies, as if the sun has melted the spray
right off. We’re being assaulted by squadrons of mosquitoes. And horseflies. And some
other creations that Lucifer has come up with in his down-time.
“Yup,” Dad says as he squints at the top of a nearby mangrove tree, shading his
eyes with one hand, the other set at his hip, elbow jutting out. “It’s the sulfur dioxide, I
think,” he says, eyes focused on the gnarled fingers of the mangrove branches. “See how
the water is reddish-brown?” He looks down and points. “The tannic acid? The smell
comes from the decomposing stuff in there.” He peers back up into the branches.
Small fish dart around in the tea-colored brackish water, through submerged
branches and dark, dead leaves. An alligator sits, half-submerged, twenty yards out near
the opposite shore of the swamp, its gray-green scales blending in with the gray-green of
the rushes that line the bank. The Great Blue Heron my father is observing leaps from its
mangrove perch and lets out a short, deep croak, very similar to a belch, that is answered
somewhere to the west. My eyes remain fixated on the fish living in tea, the mangrove
crabs making their way up and down the roots sitting at the surface of the water.
This is the third time I’ve been to Sanibel Island, Florida, each time with my
family. Whenever I’ve visited what I like to think of as my own little slice of paradise,
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2. Dad and I have woken up early on at least one day and gone to J.N. Ding Darling
National Wildlife Refuge. Every time we’ve visited Ding Darling, we’ve had this
conversation about the smell emanating from the stagnant sections of standing water, the
result of some type of sulfuric oxide (chemistry fails me) that is common in many
swamps where large portions of decomposing matter rest underwater. It’s a pungent scent
that crawls up your nostrils and snuggles up against the front of your brain, makes you
gag involuntarily where the smell is particularly overwhelming.
The fact that the sensation exists is inevitable. After all, it is a natural process.
When 5,200 acres of undeveloped mangrove ecosystem, ripe with tannic acid and tea
colored water, was set apart in 1976 as a wildlife refuge, the smell most certainly existed
then. It’s unfortunate, then, that this scent can lead to negative thoughts on the reserve.
When tourists pass us, it’s rare not to hear a complaint concerning the smell, commonly
followed by something like, “Let’s get in the car. It smells out here.” These are people
who obviously do not appreciate when something wondrous is sitting in front of their
face, like a flock of ibis glistening in the sun or hundreds of fish leaping into the air for
bugs in a synchronized swimming spectacle that has dissolved into chaos. When I say, “It
smells like eggs,” it is not a critique. It is an observation, like, “That car is blue,” or, “My
leg hurts.” Sometimes, especially at Ding Darling, the visuals are so beautiful and
otherworldly that breath can be stolen right from the body, and all that is left is a shell of
a person frozen in wonder. In those instances, all one can do is mutter the obvious. That’s
what Dad and I do every time we visit. The same conversation always occurs: “It smells
like eggs.”
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3. While we walk down the trail of crushed seashells - named “Indigo Trail” in the
reserve – I hear a soft crunching noise behind us. I pause, hoping for a moment that when
I turn around an alligator (preferably of the smaller variety) will be dragging its belly
across the trail to the water on the other side. Instead, when I turn, my eyes are met not by
scales but by feathers. Directly at my feet, not a foot and a half away, walks a Yellow-
Crowned Night Heron, almost indifferent to my existence while it goes about its heron
duty, whatever that may be. For a brief moment, it pauses in mid-stride, and cocks its
head upwards to meet a ruby-red eye to mine. We stare at each other, and it seems to me,
if he could talk, he would say, “What’s up?” We both stand there for a moment,
regarding each other. I’m fascinated that he’s this close, and he seems to be fascinated
that I care. I’m living every birdwatcher’s dream. If I want to touch him, I can, but it
almost seems…rude. “Well,” the heron says with his eyes as he looks away, “I uh…I’ll
be going now.” He walks straight ahead, across the trail, ducks beneath some low-
hanging branches, and as he wades into the water, he turns to me, almost as if he’s
worried I’ll stalk him. “Freak…I’ve got my eye on you…” Then he disappears into the
undergrowth, the patterns on his back becoming one with the reeds and the trees.
Stepping into Ding Darling is like stepping into another world, which to some
degree is a bit cliché, but there really isn’t a better way to put it. Other than the occasional
distant droning of a jet overhead, you wouldn’t even know that your feet were on United
States soil. People are few and far between, and can be seen walking quietly on the
seashell trails with binoculars and birding guides, or idling in their cars on the road that
runs through the middle of the reserve, staring at a gator or cormorant relaxing close to
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4. the pavement. In certain places, the park shares a border with backyards, but if you didn’t
know exactly where these points are, you’d be none the wiser; a thick wall of mangrove
trees makes it impossible to see more than a few feet beyond their tangled barrier, warped
and terribly twisted, their branches seeming to protect the swamp as fences protect yards.
It’s a harsh world. The literal fight for survival is staged every day in a hot, sticky
soup of a swamp. If you walk along the trails of the refuge, you’ll find the small lizards
that litter the swamp chowing down on insects, and snakes busy eating the lizards in
return. Flocks of White Ibis plow through the mud in the shallows nearly 24-7, looking
for helpless crustaceans to eliminate. Herons spear and swallow fish in quick, spastic,
violent maneuvers. One year, the annual photo contest winner was a shot of an alligator
eating another alligator, blankly staring at the camera with empty obsidian eyes with
drops of blood dripping down its maw in the water.
But the island reserve is also arrestingly gorgeous. Bright yellow flowers
nonsensically appear among the rocks and sand and sharp edges of dry grass. When the
sun is just right in the evening, light glitters in a dazzling display of colors across the
largest lagoon; millions of tiny diamonds dance across the surface of the water among
silhouetted forms of waterfowl, the birds prowling the shallows like mitochondria
dancing around in a cell.
The birds, the main draw of the park, seem to be as numerous as they were when
God created them. White Ibis may be the most common, and probably the dullest with
their uniform dirty-white suits, but there’s a Jackson Pollack painting of color and
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5. movement interspersed. Roseate Spoonbills sift through the water, their bright pink
plumage giving them appearances of roses running over the surface. Ospreys fly
overhead, occasionally crossing paths with the odd bald eagle. Black Stilts seem to defy
physics, walking on toothpicks while looking for small fish and crustaceans. All of these
beautiful birds interact on an everyday basis in quantities unmatched anywhere I have
visited or seen on television. Adam and Eve didn’t witness such a perfusion of life. Had
any of these birds ever died in this portion of the world, or do they just keep living and
reproducing?
The sad, obvious truth that so many of these birds have died defies logic. The
whole purpose of the creation of the J.N. Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, the
whole reason behind its existence, is to shelter these animals and other native fauna of the
island. It’s a broken record among environmentalist that far too much of the world’s
natural forests - indeed, far too much of the natural world – has been replaced or
permanently mangled by humanity’s needlessly heavy footsteps. Cartoonist Jay Norwood
“Ding” Darling, an avid hunter and fisherman, the man responsible for all the postage
stamps with ducks on ‘em, recognized this fact. In the ironic tradition of Theodore
Roosevelt, here was a man that loved to kill animals with a zest, but recognized that too
much of his quarry was disappearing. In 1934, Theo’s brother Frank put Darling in
charge of the U.S. Biological Survey, which would eventually become the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. He did such a bang-up job increasing the size of the National Wildlife
Refuge System that he now has a nice little plot of land named after him on Sanibel
Island. It’s supposed to be a refuge for wildlife, and it is, but it also has the feeling of a
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6. trap or a desperate last resort. For a lot of the animals that call Ding Darling home, there
aren’t too many other places left for them to go to. I would assume that, every passing
year, what started as a hint of claustrophobia among the wildlife has grown stronger and
stronger. Hurricane Charley drastically changed the landscape of the reserve in 2004,
leveling trees and nearly irreparably destroying habitat. The animals cried, “DEFCON
2!”
The fact that this is one of the few places these animals have left does not remove
the beauty from the reserve. Neither my brother nor my mother can truly appreciate it.
The mosquitoes get to Connor as if, from the moment of arrival, he’s the only source of
blood in twelve states. Five minutes after arriving, he resembles the target of a hundred
snipers, their red laser sights popped up all over his body. He’s been once, and we had to
leave quickly. Mom enjoys the sights and sounds from the comfort of a car, though she
much prefers to be out in the sun with a good book, moving back and forth from the
beach to the pool. It seems almost sacrilegious to not prostrate oneself in so holy a place,
and I will forever look down on those who ignore the wonder of Ding Darling. In this
world, our usual discussion of football or family or school or anything at all inevitably
disappears; the visuals of the unspoiled land saps up all conversation.
And so, in these precious times Dad and I are together in our little slice of
paradise, when we feel the need to say something to break the silence, when nature isn’t
breaking it for us with croaks and groans and whistles and birdsong, water lapping
against a shore, mangrove branches creaking in the wind, or leaves rustling together, we
mention the eggs and other observations of the obvious. Sometimes we just stay silent,
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