A nice, quiet Friday, with nothing more in mind as we arose, than to take a few gentle hikes, grill some steak, and lounge about the campsite. An oh yes, watch out for alligators.
We saw more of the terrain of the Everglades, beginning with a walk taking us into the expanses of sawgrass that dominate the landscape here.
We really expected that the sawgrass would be steeped in swamp, or mire, but that's not the case at all. Because this is winter, the dry season, there is very little water here right now, mostly concentrated in small areas, and ponds. Yet everywhere one looks, it's clear by the appearance of the sawgrass that water HAS moved here, and it will again when the summer rains return.
We also hiked into a mahogany hammock.
Hammocks are small islands of hardwood trees that occur due to slight rises of elevation — as I've mentioned, elevation changes of less than a foot can curry in completely unique landscape changes here.
Hardwoods require enough dry land for their roots to establish themselves,
so they tend to thrive on the highest points of land, which is why they are sometimes referred to as the "Everglades' mountains." And only about six feet high!
The mahoganies here are ancient and interwoven, sometimes serving as "nurse trees" to the bromeliads, figs, and other flora that settle and grow in its branches.
Our final hike took us through a grove of mangroves — this was a boardwalked area, as mangroves grow in water. They are so odd with their prop roots like spindly legs keeping the upper part of the tree out of the water. It's through those roots that the tree "drinks."
What's intriguing is the diversity of habitat that changes so abruptly, and so decidedly, with the slightest elevation changes. It becomes predictable the more we walk over this terrain. We just don't see such dramatic distinctions in our part of the States. In Maine, it all just feels like "woods."
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