This is the dock at the island of Atsena Otie. After we’d spent the day exploring other islands off Cedar Key including the University o ...
Shabby chic cypress trees, colorful bromeliads, and perky wildflowers adorn the waters of the Fakahatchee Strand in Big Cypress National ...
At Itchetucknee Springs State Park near Gainesville, there is a nature walk down to Blue Hole—one of the varied spring heads within the ...
I was late in my preparations for my New Year’s meal of black-eyed peas and greens and decided to get some Bradley’s Country Sausage to ...
This is the “Suspect Pen” behind Bradley’s Country Store on the outskirts of Tallahassee. Standing beside it you can’t help but want to ...
When I was an adolescent in the 1980s, I daydreamed about living in Hungry Bend and fixing it up—something akin to children’s stories wh ...
Atsena Otie was the original Cedar Key before the 1896 hurricane and its ten foot storm surge forced the island community further inland ...
In Florida, Christmas lights typically remain up year round and serve as a kind of tropical-redneck system of outdoor lighting.
Dr. Earl Starnes was appointed by Florida Governor Rubin Askew to head up the state’s first planning effort—the precursor to Florida Dep ...
In the summertime, most of panhandle Florida makes at least one tubing excursion on the Chipola River. The most popular trip leaves from ...
She just cracks me up. I got lost in Clewiston—which is hard to do—and there she was. She seemed to be having a nice Saturday afternoon ...
Known as “America’s Sweetest Town,” the City of Clewiston on the southwestern edge of Lake Okeechobee is the home of US Sugar. Sugar, ci ...
“Slip sliding away, slip sliding away. You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip sliding away.”
When the noble Cypress trees start to leaf out in the Spring, their delicate, bright green color creates what I call “Cypress Lace.”
I love to visit Corkscrew Swamp, because it is “my favorite art museum in the state.” Outdoor enthusiast snobs sometimes scoff at the ha ...
As my colleague filmmaker Joe Davenport says, “The Everglades really are just a riot of geometry, when you go out there.”
On Florida’s lower east coast “Florida Boy” fishermen call the Atlantic Ocean “out front.”
We saw this boat while bar-hopping after one of our tours taunting sailfish.
During the 1970s my mom always joked about writing to the Hee Haw television show to get them to do their hometown salute segme ...
My grandfather’s widow maintains that dogwoods are beautiful year round. According to her, they bloom in the spring, they are the greene ...
While living in Tallahassee, the local theater that offered current arty films like Cave of Discovery, The King’s Speech and
Absolutely my very favorite architecture in the state is located on the corner of US 1 and Oakland Park Boulevard in Ft. Lauderdale.
We’ve spent several Christmas vacations in Suwannee—where the Suwannee River empties into the Gulf of Mexico. On New Year’s Eve, those o ...
I am related to a number of people who love to fish. I do not get it—sitting there in the sun waiting for something to happen. But I do ...
Despite its densely populated urban areas, 66 percent of Broward County is Everglades. The county’s urban boundary is determined by a le ...
Broward County’s gateway to the eastern Everglades is Holiday Park. For years it has been operated by a concessionaire that offers touri ...
Most of Broward County was originally underwater at least part of the year before the Everglades were re-engineered as a part of the Cen ...
Spanish moss doesn’t just belong to the South because it thrives in humid climates and does not like prolonged temperatures below 25 deg ...
I spent at least two weeks every summer of my childhood with my maternal Grandmother in Leesburg, Florida.
This house is located behind Reeves Fish Camp on Lake Miccosukee which forms the northern border between Jefferson and Leon Counties. Mi ...
This trailer and its killer attack dog are part of Reeves Fish Camp on Lake Miccosukee outside of Tallahassee.
Tallahassee’s Lake Jackson is right in town, and the Miller’s Landing boat ramp is where I like to enjoy happy hour with one of my best ...
Leaving Ft. Lauderdale through Port Everglades one morning for a fishing trip, the boys were pissed because we got a late start.
Without a doubt, the prettiest street in Florida’s capitol city is Live Oak Plantation Road which parallels I-10 in the northern section ...
This tree is located at the entrance to Mr. Maclay’s elaborate garden, protected in Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park, and continuousl ...
I’ve known these trees at the Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park in Tallahassee all my life, and I can vouch for them.
Yes, camellias are something of an uptight old lady flower.
Today, Miccosukee is a small unincorporated community in northeastern Leon County, but before Florida became a territory, it was a major ...
God can see me here. I’m sure of it.
Students are always curious about how their teachers spend their time away from school, but Miss McBride’s students sometimes have troub ...
The day after Christmas in 2010 it snowed in Tallahassee.
At first I thought the kid was surly. Maybe it’s because we’d invaded his private swimming hole, or maybe he and his buddies were stoned ...
Margaret Ross Tolbert is a fabulous nationally acclaimed Florida artist with all the best conservation ethics, and more importantly, she ...
They say that Tallahassee’s canopy roads are the glorious remnants of the Red Hill Region’s old plantation system.
In the heat of the summer, we traveled to the Gadsden Art Center in the enchanting southern town of Quincy to see nationally-acclaimed a ...
Even though the scalloping trip my family organizes every single year can be pretty competitive, it’s something both our young and old e ...
US Senator Bill Nelson did his best trying to tackle the problem of invasive exotic pythons in the Everglades. During the 2008 press con ...
In my top-three earliest of memories is making a swing with my father. I couldn’t have been four years old, but it was an afternoon acti ...
When the hurricanes of 2005 destroyed so many of the structures in Everglades National Park, it seemed like everybody wanted to “reboot” ...
Believe it or not, it does get cold on Miami Beach—cold enough for bums to turn to Santa suits to keep warm.
If I absolutely had to choose just one of Florida’s spectacular rivers to spend my time with to the exclusion of all others, it would pr ...
Starting in my thirties and for well over a decade, my buddies and I would rent a beach house on St. George Island for a week in the sum ...
The legend of the Dogwood tree holds that the tree’s wood was used to make the cross that crucified Christ.
Buzzards like to frequent my Aunt Kelly’s cabin near Ft. White. I’m talking about a lot of buzzards—and they collect in the majestic bra ...
My family enjoys deer and duck hunting on St. Vincent Island, just offshore from the mouth of the Apalachicola River in the Gulf of Mexi ...
We’ve spent a couple of Christmases vacationing in the Town of Suwannee, where the historic Suwannee River empties into the Gulf of Mexi ...
My family spent an Indian summer weekend “Way Down Upon the Suwannee River” near Branford in 2008.
The heart of the Everglades is Lake Okeechobee—the second largest fresh water lake within the continental United States.
After the communist takeover of Cuba, Alfonso Fanjul reestablished his family’s business south of Lake Okeechobee in 1960.
The Everglades are slowly dying all around us, and poor old polluted Lake Okeechobee is almost at the point where we need to start talki ...
The Wacissa River begins in south-central Jefferson County near the community of Wacissa—a quaint turn in the road where only several hu ...
When we got to this spring that feeds the Wacissa River in southern Jefferson County we were showing our age.
The Everglades are a nutrient poor system and in areas like this where the water quality of the historic River of Grass is still healthy ...
Contrary to public opinion, there is a change of season in south Florida’s semi-tropical environment.
In search of Pecan Pralines for a sweet Florida Boy serving in Afghanistan, I have been stopping at the tackiest tourist traps on Florid ...
There’s a whole culture of folks who frequent interstates and the Florida Turnpike coming and going through the long peninsula.
One of my childhood friends grew up thinking the song by the band America directed you to “Venture a Highway in the sunshine, Where ...
One of my childhood friends grew up thinking the song by the band America directed you to “Venture a Highway in the sunshine, Where the ...
I love to visit Corkscrew Swamp, because it is “my favorite art museum in the state.”
One of my dear friends who also attended FSU saw this painting while I was working on it and flashed her bright teasing smile, “Hey I kn ...
The Steinhatchee River begins in Mallory Swamp just south of Town of Mayo and forms the boundary between Dixie and Taylor Counties.
Just beyond the small fishing community of Steinhatchee, the Steinhatchee River flows into the Gulf of Mexico creating Dead Man’s Bay.
While I was working for the Florida Park Service in the late 1980s, I found myself in the ranger station at St. George Island State Park ...
There’s a reason why an auto parts store can be found in the smallest of towns.
On the edge of Lake Hall is one hell of a Live Oak tree. Free to branch out however it wanted, this is how Mother Nature wanted Live Oak ...
In May of 2012 we canoed down the Santa Fe from the US 27 bridge, because the water levels were too low to leave from Jim Wood’s Canoe O ...
My cousin’s Palomino had a dreadful run of bad luck after a stable accident where she was boarded in Palm Beach County.
The majestic trees in Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park in Tallahassee are all old friends of mine.
Live oaks, a cabbage palm, and a magnolia tree complete something of a holy trinity of Florida trees for me at Alfred B. Maclay Gardens ...
For 26 years Naked Ed has lived at Lily Spring on the Santa Fe River south of the Town of High Springs.
These are kumquats at the Leu Gardens in downtown Orlando, but I grew up with the trees all over south Florida.
Driving around the sleepy streets of LaBelle it’s easy to understand why people sometimes get confused about why the small agricultural ...
The Ibis is the mascot of the University of Miami’s “Hurricanes” because the ibis is usually the first bird that is spotted after a hurr ...
So what do you think happened to the top right tier if this gate?
When we were little kids we loved to visit relatives and family friends in enchanting places like Cedar Key where you were allowed to wa ...
This regal character was working the bay one hot afternoon.
Grass hay, put up in large rolls like this, looks so old fashioned to me.
You hafta wonder when he was floating in the Pacific after his aircraft carrier was hit in the Battle of Iwo Jima, what Captain George W ...
Check out the website for a hilarious blog about “Is it a Dolphin or a Porpoise?”
Grant is an old fishing and agricultural community on the Indian River in southern Brevard County.
If you haven’t read the collection of stories in Between Two Rivers, you are missing some mighty fine tales about the Red Hills Region a ...
It is believed that a retired Navy man who lived in the house on the corner of McGregor Boulevard and Grove Avenue in Ft. Myers either e ...
No husbands, boyfriends, kids, dogs, or even cell phone reception. Just the girls—kindred spirits you never seem to get enough of for a ...
In 1925, five years after women were granted the right to vote, the Florida Legislature ruled to allow women of a “mature age” to attend ...
I spent my entire childhood adolescence with horses and left them for college.
In addition to sheltering tony beach houses, fashionable restaurants, and one of the best locally owned book stores in the state, Sanibe ...
My family has a long history with this tree because my great grandfather’s sister was Mrs. Waldo Cummer.
I don’t know if it’s fortunate or unfortunate that I always seem to visit The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville when someon ...
I believe the need to grow tomatoes is a genetic trait most evident in southerners.
Slender, pale trunks of the palms clutter the trail in the Cathedral of the Palms, begging you to look up.
In the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge is the old Wakulla Beach Road.
The vast majority of the rivers in north Florida and the panhandle begin in Georgia and flow through the state on their way south to the ...
In the more urban stretches of the state, “transients” mean something very different than the transients who are welcomed at marinas alo ...
In the 1970s, I remember tall vases of wispy grasses and feathers considered stylish in American decor.
No, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge spanning Tampa Bay is not actually that obvious from the Rod & Reel Pier.
When I see pictures of the French or Italian Riviera, I can’t help but think they don’t seem any more glamorous than Florida’s bejeweled ...
Under the shady beach umbrella, with an umbrella in my frozen cocktail, “this” was obstructing my view of the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1943, a Seventh-Day Adventist named George Gruesbeck put up this sign at his Ft. Myers house on the corner of McGregor Boulevard and ...
I love the way the light on Live Oak Plantation Road changes with the seasons and so far I have two different paintings of this treasure ...
Both St. George Island and St. Vincent Island probably received their European names in 1633 from the Franciscan Friars establishing Spa ...
The shrine reads: “I surrendered my life in exchange for my owner’s freedom but in return he built a place for me on top of the world. L ...
Just about all 36 miles of the St. Marks River south of Tallahassee are glorious. The spring fed river is a curvy, canopied celebration ...
While looking at Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod Morning, a docent at the National Portrait Gallery told me that she overheard a father asking ...
As a part of the region’s massive public works system that provides flood protection and adequate water supplies for South Florida, thre ...
Closely related to pineapples, the indigenous people called the bromeliad known for draping Southern canopies “tree hair.” The French th ...
Everglades tree islands can be found in the remaining portions of the River of Grass where the ridge and slough ecosystem dominates — to ...
MY FLORIDA nestles somewhere between science and folklore and breeds a reality that is both transcendent and preposterous. Its great meaning comes from the fact that it rarely makes sense to its largely transient population. Spanish explorers came, astronauts used to leave, but Florida's game will always be about "Location, Location, Location." The vast majority of its players come here to retire and die; relax and vacation; set up a scam; or, seek some kind of tax shelter. For those of us who have a generational history on the peninsula and no real underlying motive for being here, well, we sometimes seem as off as the very landscape that has shaped us. So here's my story on my Florida. And I'm sticking to it.
