I’d always wanted to head to the Everglades. And given the presence of my eldest daughter, living there, a client, a conference, seemed like a good idea to see about heading out there.
Also: airboats. I wanted to see what that was all about.
I drove. These images are about the sense of being waterbound, with them; the other character of that glade marsh ecosystem — which I’ll proffer I don’t know much about, some feral boars, that showed less fear than I reaching into the water (therewas food coming out of the boat — some kind of pellets for the birds…) And there were birds; and that was curious — I’m imagining them as corvidae. But they might’ve been Starling familial? Little big, to that comparison, and very crow-like in action…
airboatman
some guinea fowl
the blades, the glade
light scale
boars, feral and forage
the sight, the shielding plates, the variegation
These are strange creatures to get close to, and I’d not done that before. Been close, let alone touching them. The skin is as hard as it looks. Like fibrous oak. Hard but flexible. Yet, somehow, being near them, cruising the water, I had no foolish fear of being bitten. Somehow I didn’t quite put that together…The boatman kept saying something like “gitcha outta wadda”. I figured that out, unscathed. Smitten but unbitten, I suppose.
I looked for texture, the coloring, the crocodilian patterning. And the eyes — ancient in character. Everything, of course, to the gatormind is jurassic.
TSG | palm beach