Florida: the land of fierce beauty and wildness
And why connecting others to this magic lights me up
Last night a really beautiful thing happened: I found renewed hope for the wild places in Florida.
Florida is a land of subtle and fierce beauty, if you know how to see it. There is a special wildness about my state that can leave you speechless.
There is fierce love in my heart for wild Florida. Sometimes, I’ve let the pilot light of that love go out when the daily busyness of life has gotten in the way. Last night I was given a rare gift that rekindled that fire for me. 🔥
It used to be my dream to steward land in rural Florida. To be in deep relationship with the land, homesteading on it and being immersed in its cycles and rhythms and songs. Honoring it, and nurturing it as it gave back to me.
But, for a lot of reasons, I let that dream go quietly a few decades ago.
Being a researcher, educator, and Park Ranger in Everglades and Biscayne National Parks for nearly 7 years, taught me how to read the land, water and sky; know the plants; and fearlessly understand the animals.
I learned to navigate the fragile backcountry waters of Florida Bay and the offshore waters of Biscayne National Park like a pro. And I learned to tell stories from the heart to teach and connect others to how to love these magical, wild places too.
Those years were when I truly fell in love with wild Florida: salt marshes, crocodiles, coral reefs, hurricanes, tree islands, ospreys, mangroves, manatees, razor-sharp sawgrass prairies, dolphins, rocky pine and palmetto forests, roseate spoonbills, wildfires, and fish-laden backcountry bays.
That time in relationship to the land and water and wild beings was a gift I am still unwrapping today as I pass on that wisdom and love for Florida to my children.
My daughter was born here, and I do everything I can to show her how miraculous this wild land truly is. She’s known the names of the fish and birds since she was a toddler, we go camping often, and the beach is our Happy Place. She also knows a fair number of bird calls (Sandhill Cranes and Screech Owls are her favorite).
When my daughter was born I had to bow out of working in the conservation world, I didn’t have it in me to be her Mama and work in the stressful and often discouraging conservation world.
But last night, I took my 8 year old to her first movie in a theatre - she chose to see “Path of the Panther” to learn more for her school inquiry project. So being able to experience the magic of her first movie on the big-screen about saving the Florida Panther (our favorite) was pretty incredible.
I was also eager to go because I’d been following the work of the Florida Wildlife Corridor and Carlton Ward, Jr. for nearly a decade. After 7 years of filming, “Path of the Panther” is a rare conservation story that shows the seeds of hope actually sprouting, after a decade of backsliding as habitat has dwindled.
My daughter was mesmerized by the intimate footage of the animals and the epic cinematography of the landscape. She wanted to know where it was all taken and when we could go there.
She’s been camping here since she was a baby, but this was different. This was the first time she could feel a scope for the beauty and wildness of the land. She wanted to know when I would finally take her camping in the Everglades.
And I cried, at the familiar heart break of seeing panthers killed by cars and disease. A wild majestic animal desperately trying to survive in a scrap of land. And my daughter watched me and simply put her head on my shoulder without saying a word.
The movie brought me back to my own experiences with Florida Panthers. I have actually encountered a Florida Panther in the wild in Little Salt Spring, outside of North Port, FL. And I have flown on tracking surveys for panthers and we were blessed to find and see a mother and 2 kittens from the air (the flights are intense and jokingly called The Vomit Comet… all I can say is bring a zip lock bag. 🤢)
The movie is well crafted in that it’s showing how conservation can be done right - working with the people, for the people AND the land and animals. It shows how story-telling can be skillfully wielded as a policy tool for change too. And that also made me cry, for seeing there is hope that we can leave land for wildlife too.
I was so proud of my daughter’s courage to get up to ask a question after the movie and the creators were kind in how they answered her (see the video). She wanted to know why they chose to focus on the panther for their movie, and the message was clear:
Because in the end, the wilderness is our life support system too - if the wildlife can’t survive, then really, we can’t either. No more water to drink without the wilderness to replenish the aquifer; and bigger storm flooding without the wetlands to soak up the excess during hurricane season.
And really, if we aren’t passing on the love and connection with the living land to our children, then it’s pretty hard for them to grow up feeling wonder at the wildness of nature.
But what I loved most was the way they honored the local indigenous wisdom of the land by featuring Betty Osceola, talking about how in her spiritual wisdom traditions the Panther represents the ability for the land to provide for and protect us. If that spiritual connection is broken, then the balance that can sustain our lives is broken too.
So if you want to feel inspired by how beautiful, majestic, dynamic, and truly wild Florida is, then go check out the new movie, “The Path of the Panther”. And if you want to see how story-telling can move people to change, then take a friend to watch it with you too to help spread the seeds of change.