1/2/18, The Everglades, Florida

As a born and raised Floridian I am almost ashamed to say that my first trip to the Everglades was on my freshman winter break trip coming back from school in Montana. In Montana, I made friends with a fellow Floridian named Shepherd who was from an area around the Everglades and was more than willing to take me on an expedition through the gator packed swamps. It was now time to back up all the gator wrestling stories I had been lying to my Montanan classmates about.

This trip would also mark my first real off roading experience. Shep was the proud owner of a Jeep Cherokee, which he named Bear. Shep gave me the reins to Bear, so I could fully appreciate the off roading thrill of dodging potholes and speeding through water with unknown depths. While I fixated on not popping a tire, Shep had his mind on more adventurous thoughts.

He yelled for me to stop and to put the car in reverse for a couple seconds. I thought he must have spotted some massive alligator laying on the bank near the water, but this was no mere alligator we were stopping for. Shep had spotted a cypress tree that looked absolutely perfect for climbing. There was one barrier that could have kept us from reaching the tree: 30 yards of murky unclear waist deep water. In gator country, walking through that much water and not being able to see what is directly beneath you is not exactly safe. Shep volunteered to go first, with me following directly behind, since he didn't want the responsibility of explaining my death to my parents. We used our walking staffs to poke check the water in front of us for gators. We made it to a cluster of small trees and thick branches and decided it was a better route to take instead of risking going through the open water where we thought a ferocious alligator would be more likely to reside. I was willing to incur a few small cuts for the added safety. To eliminate a few seconds in the water we climbed up a slippery fallen branch that was barely poking out of the water. Shep made his way across without any hesitation and jumped back in the water at the end of the branch. I had to utilize my walking staff to balance myself on the branch to keep my whole body from plunging down into the mysterious swamp. After we made our way off the branch and past more dense hanging twigs we made it to the base of the tree. Lucky for Shep and I that our favorite exercise is pull-ups, so climbing the tree was a cinch. We had to proceed with caution though, because Shep ran into a snake skin halfway up the tree. One more creature that you have to be aware of when you take a stroll through the Everglades is venomous snakes. The snakes were more frightening than the gators in a way, because they were more difficult to spot. To the best of our knowledge the tree was clear of any snakes and we took a moment to appreciate everything that surrounded us. Sometimes you can only appreciate all that surrounds you, from a vantage point that allows you to see the grand design.

The trickiest part about any sort of climbing is not figuring out how to climb up, but more so how to climb down. With a few daring swings from higher branches to lower hanging branches we made our way back to the base of the tree. We followed the same way we came back this time with me leading. I once again had to battle the perilous fallen branch. As I walked along the branch my staff sunk into the deceptive mud causing me to lose my balance. After wobbling on top of the branch for a bit, I swung my body forward and leaped from the branch onto my feet into the water to keep from falling straight back into it. Shep took the lead from then on and we made our way safely out of the swamp. Looking back on all that had just occurred it was a miracle that not a single living creature decided to take a quick bite at us.

We drove a little farther up the shattered road and our trip transformed from an off roading adventure to hiking along a narrow path with gators on both sides of us. Our hike reminded me of the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35, except instead of Jesus explaining the scriptures to me it was Shep explaining the mysteries of the Everglades. We came across a baby cottonmouth in the middle of our path with it's eyes transfixed on us. We slowly made our way around the lethal snake as it's head followed our every movement. After that encounter, I was on high alert for any crawling creatures near our path. We stopped at a water hole filled with egrets, jumping catfish and a behemoth size alligator that dropped down into the water from the bank as soon as it spotted us. The water hole was actually quite a beautiful place with palm trees hanging over the water and rocks covering the banks. If you took out the killer floating logs it would be a nice place to take a swim. We thought that we had fully experienced the Everglades at this point and made our way back to the car.

I was glad I had finally experienced the crown jewel of Florida and I could now go back to Montana feeling I had participated in the best adventure Florida had to offer. Before we would both go back to Montana though, we took a trip down to Everglade City to snack on some chewy gator tail bites. As my good friend Shepherd put it, "we gave the gators their chance to devour us, now it's our opportunity to snack on them."