A Swamp and 60 Feet

Sakeus Bankson for Patagonia, Inc.

An unlikely community, in the most unlikely location, has become an even more unlikely force for public lands conservation.

photo by Nathalie DuPré

The eyes would be easy to miss, rising an inch or two above the brackish water like burls on a half-sunken log. And we would have, if our Floridian companions hadn’t pointed them out, because we’d been focused on a pink flamingo lawn ornament tucked in the nearby foliage. Besides the two vertical pupils, the rest of the alligator’s scaled, 6-foot-long body is hidden under a mat of vibrant green algae. It blinks and disappears beneath the surface without a ripple.

A submerged dinosaur is strange enough. But this is Florida, where 12-foot alligators wander golf courses and 9-foot snakes and finger-​chomping, 200-pound turtles hide among the swampy forests. Earlier, I came across an armadillo, the only animal (besides humans) known to carry leprosy. In such a menagerie of scaly horrors, one gator is hardly noteworthy.

The strip of dirt under our tires, however, very much is: a steep, purpose-built mountain bike trail in the center of the flattest and lowest state in the Union.

Read on: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/a-swamp-and-60-feet/story-97390.html?