How often do gators eat?
About once per week

Second to none

I turned forty a few weeks back.

Not that’s forty’s old – it’s not, nor is monumental – I feel and look the same as yesterday:

But it is reflective.


I found myself thinking back to, if not “simpler” times, certainly ones now dripping with a nostalgia of “worlds gone by.”

Take for example me as a kid back in the Mudderland jumping from one boulder to the next in the din of crashing water in the shadows of a geologic escarpment called King and Queen Seat … wondering what might be out there in the world for me.

The actual stream of water – if you went up current or down – is officially known as Deer Creek – a small tributary of the Susquehanna, but nobody called that exact spot anything other than Rocks State Park …

Or simply “Rocks.”


Years later I found myself at the south rim of the Grand Canyon staring down into an impenetrable stratum of subterranean clouds,

Everything below a few hundred feet was a total blur.

We’d all but given up – and were ready to head back down to Tucson – when on the morning of the final day the weather broke:

The clouds magically parted before our eyes.


Sensing it as a sign, and perhaps with clairvoyance into the future that life would never quite present us with this exact (if also insane) chance again, we spontaneously and simultaneously succumbed to the imperceptibly faint (and in all likelihood imagined) song of the sirens in the inner gorge below:

“The river a-waits!” we concurred.

Onward and downward it would be – we would touch it by mid day, and return by dusk,

Or in hiker lingo: “Colorado River and back up again … or bust!”



Without regret and with hopeful hearts we descended Kaibab Trail.

The hike down was laughably easy, if also long, and steep.

While I didn’t age on the hike down – we did descended through a billion years worth of geology.


The river itself was a mild disappointment.

Its banks were strewn with “dinosaur egg” shaped rocks, but devoid of boulders for jumping, and extremely muddy.

Even more, the thought of Glen Canyon Dam upstream, and my recent adoption – hook, line, and sinker – of the Edward Abbey doctrine, as espoused in “Desert Solitaire” (his best) and other writings – had me shaking my head in skepticism:

“It was wet to the touch alright,” I concluded, crouching down by its murky shallows. “But was it the real river … or just a carefully engineered water release to feed the unquenchable thirst of some distant electrical power grid?”


On the hike back out I did “age.”

Bright Angel Trail was touted as not being as steep, but it was up (and up and up and up!).

I blacked out into a hiking-induced coma fog. There was no longer room (or time) for error, detours, or extended breaks – the hike had narrowed into a “single fold” mission:

Get to the top or bust!


Nearing the rim euphoria hit … as did a sensation of an utter and indescribable exhaustion.

We were now among the day hikers and rim enthusiasts whom, in flip flops and waterless, were taking photos, rapid fire style, in the by gone days of the film camera.



Had they only known the feat we’d just completed – 13 miles by foot and a mile down and back up again by altimeter – they should have been taking photos of us!

Instead we reached horizontal earth in the silence of a darkening sky and an uncaring crowd … and “rubber chicken” legs.

“We touched the river, it was wet, but that was all.”



The thing about forty, and probably any age before you reach it, is that it appears in the distance, way up in the sky – its peak alternatively shinny and cloud obscured – like an insurmountable mountain.

A 5th grader – all of ten years old – stands Goliath compared to a David-scale Kindergartener. I think back to the faces of the seniors I revered when I was a freshman in the same halls: Three decades later they still seem older than me, despite them having never aged from the photos as I remember them, the same way perhaps that they are quixotically “forever” young to the seniors who knew them fleetingly their freshman year.

When my parents reached the forty milestone I’m reminded of my vague notion that “wow, that’s old!” and also musing, in a perplexed state of inertia, exactly when it was that an “adult” becomes an adult, or rather, starts thinking like one?


Fast forward thirty years and here I am, more or less the same.

Not that I think like a kid – I don’t, nor have I succumbed to a middle-age craziness of trying to reclaim my twenties – I’m not; what strikes me most (almost in epiphany) is the realization that the way I think now is a continuity of how I’ve always thought … at eight, eighteen, twelve, and twenty four.

Yes I’ve added new wrinkles and “tweaked” algorithms and thrown out more than a few falsehoods, but otherwise I’m the same as I ever was.


Which brings me to why we climb mountains?

Most would agree: To get to the top.

It is true that some hike “slow” (on purpose) with the idea of enjoying the so-called “sides” of the mountain – also known as “the journey” – but that’s just the means, not the ends, which inevitably is the top.


And at the summit, what do we do?

It’s never “wow! Look up at the sky – it’s so blue!”

Instead we look down:

Partly for the view yes, but mostly to see how far we’ve climbed.


That’s what bothers me most about the Grand Canyon.

You “reap the harvest” of the view without any of the work, or not much.

And one other thing –

You can’t hear river from the rim, you can only see it, but just barely: you’d swear it’s a creek if you didn’t know otherwise it was the Colorado.


Had I had the chance, here’s what I would have done on my fortieth:

Parking my car at the bottom of Rocks, I’d run across old Route 24, then proceed to jump around on the giant boulders for a good half hour before stopping to ease myself down to “splash” water on myself from the water’s edge.

Without haste, but taking proper safety precautions, I would then re-cross the asphalt, also known as St. Claire Bridge Road, and blaze a path up the steep rise on the “king” side of the cliff. Upon getting to the top, I would then proceed to catwalk out onto the geologic plank to I met its airy edge … and then – at long last – look down.

By “down” I mean back into time,

Not the one billion years of the Grand Canyon’s inner gorge –

Just my time, my forty years,

And be happy that the creek is down there flowing “just the same as it ever was.”

Even better:

To hear the whisper of its roar through the leaves!


The canyon’s as deep as its waters run young!

Dangerous surf

Full moon bay

The winter tides are up, but not quite “over”
(... the top of the weir that is):

Freshwater is still flowing and keeping it “at bay”
(... or rather, "in the bay");

At least that was the case when I stopped at the Faka Union Weir during a recent moon-induced salt-water surge.


The moon isn’t any bigger during winter mind you,

Nor is it contributing any extra water (although thanks to NASA we now know it has some!),

It’s just closer.

That makes it stronger to its earthly servant – the salt water tides.


Four foot tides are huge for south Florida,

But nothing compared to the 55 foot rise and fall in Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy.


Floridians pump the equivalent of two Lake Okeechobee volumes of water from its aquifers every year.

That’s a lot but nothing compared to what the moon slurps out of the Bay of Fundy in a half day span:

Twenty four Lake Okeechobee sized bowls!



Now I know where the moon gets its water.

weekend arrives

Economics of lawn watering

Is Florida is running out of water?

In some corners – yes, the aquifers are fully tapped … and how could they not be at a per capita demand of 179 gallons per day per person. (see article)

Floridians aren’t that thirsty, but their lawns are!
Miami-Dade County withdrawals 400 million gallons per day from the Biscayne Aquifer. Add that up over the course of a year gets you 450,000 acre feet of water,

Or in other words, approximately the same annual flow volume into Everglades Nat’l Park through its four S12 structures.




Across the pond in Collier County, about 67 gallons per day from its aquifers each year, or 75,000 acre feet.

That adds up to the annual volume of water that flows under the Tamiami Trail at Bridge 86 – also called Barnes Strand – in Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve,

Or in Shark River terms, the annual discharge through the S12A.




S12A and the bridge at Barnes Strand couldn’t be more different:

The former is gated – it’s only open 3.5 months per year and currently closed.

The later is free flowing and still going strong.




How do I know?

The same way I know about the ground-water pumping numbers:

The U.S. Geological Survey is out there measuring!

welcome to the swamp

Inner lumper

Are Florida rains "spatially" homogenous?

Yes and no.


Summer thunder showers are ubiquitous wherever you go. The four “core” summer months (June, July, August, and September) account for half of Florida’s annual 54 inch total.

The winter is a different story:

South Florida has a “dry” winter in comparison to a “wetter” north. That gives the Suwannee and the Apalachicola spring “high water” signatures.

The Everglades is just the opposite:

It peaks in fall.


Does that make a single number for all of Florida meaningless?

I’ve heard it said in life that there are “lumpers" and "splitters,” as if to imply you have to be either one or the other.

The truth is that we have to be a little of each.



Thanks to The Southeast Regional Climate Center for helping me find my “inner lumper!”

view from castle

"Furniture-burning" freeze

Yes, Belgium is cold:

I’ve already noted that “the coldest winter I’ve ever spent (since I’ve moved to south Florida) was a summer in Belgium.”


Not that I minded.

Snowbirds flock to Florida for the winter, but come summer, full time residents migrate the other way, or try to – for as many weeks as can be allowed.



But what about a Belgium winter?

As a rule they are wet, cold, and cloudy … plus, count on more rain than snow.

But deep freezes periodically descend from the arctic, to “furniture burning” effect.


I don’t know that by experience, but rather “second hand:”

The story is that when American troops pushed through eastern Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, General Dwight D. Eisenhower set up a temporary winter base camp inside this castle.


From a strategic standpoint it was an enviable spot:

High terrain, good views in all directions, and a steep valley to one side.

Had it only a few chords of dry wood it would have been perfect!



Plan “B” would have to suffice instead. Standing, after all, was better than freezing –

And furniture can be replaced.



Special thanks on this day to all our veterans.

Weir No. 1 video

Multi-gear cycle

How can we be at a record low …

But still be pretty high?


Blame it on an early end to the wet season (i.e., a stormless October) and a rainless early start to the dry season (November – mid May).

The result is that the swamp is at a two-decadelow for mid November.

Keep in mind that swamp stage is still high relative to what we’ll see later in the winter and spring.

That’s assuming we don’t have a “wet” dry season – as I’ve read we might in the newspapers. The same El Nino that quieted the Atlantic hurricane season with high-altitude sheer winds may send us a “colder and wetter” winter here in south Florida.

Or so the theory goes:

The last-gasp reemergence of the tropics with Ida gives me pause for thought.

Did something change?


Our last really big El Nino-soaked dry season was epic El Nino of 1998, and before that, 1994-1995, which importantly was the back end of a relatively weak (but multi-year) El Nino:

Such a prolonged condition is favorable to wet Florida winters.

Those years “freeze-framed” the swamps in a full saturation mode through most of the winter.

My best guess for this year is “slow motion” slide down into traditional dry season territory, as shown below.

Blues show surface water (the darker the deeper), the sand color is where it is dry.
What’s wet and dry (and how deep) is a function of the seasons and other cycles.

The water cycle is just "one wheel," but it has many gears!

Weir No. 1

First weir

Skies have been rainless for a month,


But the waters were still flowing ...


as of late October when I visited this structure.


This is Weir #1:

The final structure on the Golden Gate Canal (in Collier County). It feeds water into the original run of the Gordon River, and then out to sea ...

Or in this case, the gulf.

local grown

Very ripe on the vine

Florida is the land of oranges,

But you won’t find any in the stores now … at least not the natives.


That will be changing in the upcoming weeks now that weather has cooled.

In the meanwhile, you may have noticed the prolific presence of another fruit on the racks:

It’s apple season up north!


One fall long ago I visited my brother in the Hudson River valley.

I had just returned east after living a few years in the Sonoran Desert corner of the Great American Southwest studying (you guessed it) water.


The back story is that Arizona didn’t have any (water), or not much of it – the few drops they did have were more precious because of it.

Also conspicuously absent were “seasons.”

The natives always scoff indignantly. “Of course we have seasons!” they’d sternly rebut followed by a subtle litany explained in condescending overtones.


Regardless, I found myself routinely pausing in thought during my entire stay in Arizona trying to remember what month it was …

“Is it April or August?”

“Oh that’s right, how could I forget – it’s January!”


In any event, I arrived at my brothers doorstep after a five-hour drive from Cape Cod, not so much in a state of “time out of mind” as I was a “mind out of season.”

Opening his fridge, I was shocked to see apples packed everywhere – up on the egg racks, behind the butter, in every unused drawer.

I grabbed one instinctively and proceeded to wash it under the faucet.

“Is it alright if I eat an apple,” I asked.

“They’re pretty good,” a voice deadpanned from the other room, “unless you want to wait until spring for them to get really ripe on the vine!”


Confused, a bit embarrassed, but hungry – I ate that apple.

Thinking about it days later I broke out into riotous laughter (and for a few years running it became a standard joke between my brother and I):


Of course the apples were “alright to eat” – it was October, in Dutchess County, orchards everywhere:

“What part of fall didn’t I understand?”

Seen but not heard:
heat lightning

Back to the future

A Jetport almost destroyed the Big Cypress Swamp, but ended up saving it instead.

Before the preserve was a preserve it was just a remote patch of swampland that developers subdivided and people bought (from around the world) in hope that it lay in the "path of progress."


Then entered Miami-Dade County:

It bought 37-square miles of the swamps eastern corner in hopes of building a municipal airport to service both coasts.

(Miami’s coastal airport was running out of room.)

They got as far as a two mile runway before an environmental movement “took off” to stop it.



Everglades Nat’l Park also factored in:

It gets three-fifths of its upstream inflow of freshwater via Big Cypress flow ways.



But stopping the Jetport was always about saving the swamp (in the form of Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve and Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, both established in 1974).

Or rather, stopping “progress” before it got started!



As for the Jetport?

The two mile runway and 37-mile tract are still there, both owned by Miami-Dade County, along with issues surrounding what to do with them. (article 1) (article 2) (article 3)



The "path to progress" sometimes runs in full circle:

In the swamp sometimes the slog never ends.

Drive home safely:

It's dark now early!