When Columbus arrived in the "West Indies", the Calusa were hanging out in the Everglades.  The Spanish, despite two expeditions led by Ponce de Leon, were unable subdue them.  Over the next two centuries, as the Spanish shipped more and more gold stolen from the Aztecs and Incas, pirates hid out in the Everglades and Florida Keys, daring the dangerous Florida Straights to get their share of the booty.  In the early 1800s, refugees from the Creek Indian wars fled into the Everglades, where they were joined by (and sheltered) runaway slaves.  They became known as 'Seminoles', or 'runaways'.  Famous injun killer and genocidal butcher Andrew Jackson tried (as Florida's 1st governor, and later as president) to force them out, but they never surrendered, fighting well into the 1900s before the US finally gave up and let them stay.

This weekend, myself, three other instructors, and ten students of diverse ethnic backgrounds will join this historical line of  proud warriors, refugees, and swashbucklers - we will live in the Everglades for 20 days!  We will paddle through a maze of mangroves, sawgrass, and cypress hammocks, rarely stepping out of our seven canoes for the whole trip.  There's precious little in the way of dry land, so at night we will lash our canoes together to form our own little island and sleep on a platform we build across the top.  By mid-course we'll camp at a beautiful wilderness beach we will have all to ourselves on the Gulf of Mexico.  We will stay there for three nights, then paddle back along the coast to Whitewater Bay, which we must cross (picture the intro to Hawaii 5-0 here, with our canoes lashed together to form catamarans, and all the kids paddling like crazy to make headway in the surf, waves crashing over our boats...) to reach our pickup.

Along the way we will see alligators and crocodiles (the Everglades are home to the only American Crocodiles), sharks and tarpon, eagles and osprey, manatees and dolphins, snowy egrets and great white herons, roseate spoonbills and pelicans...  If we are truly lucky, we may even see a Florida Panther (it is a dream I have).

Final preparations are  underway.  Twenty days in one of the world's truly unique places.  We have one more night of freedom, and then Darkling Thrush is Outward Bound!

Currently watching : The Motorcycle Diaries (Widescreen Edition)