Back in January TC and I spent a month exploring Southwest Florida. Early on in the trip we went on a “Safari” to the Florida Everglades. A feature of the “adventure” was a trip on an air-boat through the Everglades National Park. Such air-boats are a classic Florida attraction, a thing of the 1950’s-1960’s, where a boat with an aircraft engine tears at top speed through the swamp. The goal appears to be both to terrify every animal present and to break the backs of every patron. I cannot rate it eco-friendly, and at worst it is the opposite.

However, at one point the pilot shut off the engine, and we quietly floated among the grasses on the edge of the lake, watched without comment by a nearby turkey vulture. There was an insistent breeze and ominous clouds loured in the sky above us. There is something poignant about not seeing any sign of humanity. Years ago I used to position myself just so in the Ithaca gorges to achieve the precise effect.

Here it came easily, and I was reminded of the now out-of-date dinosaur murals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. These I loved so much as a child. In particular was the brontosaurus, his weight too cumbersome to be supported without the assistance of water.

Here was his swamp. I kept expecting to see him peer down at me while munching on a great wad of grass – a scene not quite right. – grandeur now lost to silicon graphics. Pausing there in the everglades was something magical. There was a lesson to be learned in the end – one of both belonging and being alien – brontosaurus or not.