There was a little girl on the tour in the Everglades with us, who when asked what she most wanted to see, it was manatees first and alligators second. Sadly we saw no manatees. It was too early in the season. But, alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) are kind of the quintessential Florida wildlife experience. They only disappointed in their size and number. Most that I saw were five or six feet long – no mighty behemoths – and there really weren’t that many of them either.

Never-the-less, in terms of antediluvian and prehistoric terror they really don’t disappoint. While you mostly see them lying about in the sun, you immediately recognize there ability to eat whatever they want. As I said, they are basically a giant muscle with teeth. And you really cannot resist anthropomorphizing them into something sinister and evil, which, of course, they are not. Just stay out of the water.

I took several alligator photographs in Florida on this trip. I chose this one because it shows the beast lurking in among the swamp weeds. It reminds me of the movie Jurassic Park and it seems to speak of an earlier age of reptiles, where you might find a velociraptor or T-Rex hunting, and then you realize that you are dinner, especially if you’re a lawyer.

For me, the greatest fun this winter in Southwest Florida was photographing the birds. A special place was Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island. Our first day there was dank, rainy, and grey. The birds were, more than any other day that TC and I visited Ding Darling, utterly teaming. The photograph of Figure 1 was actually taken right behind the admissions booth. It shows an immature white ibis (Eudocimus albus) , pretty common in this part of Florida. What was striking to me was that he/she seemed to be looking right at me with an expression that seemed is ask, “You looking at me?”

The cyprus swamp at Corkscrew is famous for its wildlife. We had barely gotten on the path, which is a winding boardwalk though the swamp, when we were stopped in our tracks by a mother racoon (Procyon lotor) and her three little kits crossing just in front of us. It was interesting how the racoons in Florida seem to often be out in the daylight. Clearly, they we used to people. They were focused, crossed across the little bridge and climbed into the water. They swam a few feet to a bush and then could all be seen about six feet in front of us, so much for the need for long telephoto lenses! I took the photo of Figure 1 of a little kit, delightfully reaching for a bunch of berries.

Everglade grasses, mangrove swamps, and beaches – the other great natural environment in Southwest Florida is the Cedar Swamps – there are shades of youthful imaginings. It is all personified by Georgia’s great Okefenokee Swamp. We visited two of these sites: the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Naples, Florida and the Six Mile Cypress Slough Sanctuary in Fort Myers. A slough is a place of deep muck and mire, i.e. a swamp. And for nature lovers they are deeply contemplative and moving places. And also I should point out that as a Northeastern photographer it is a learning experience. If you spot something worth photographing along the waters edge, you learn that your first though should not be to approach it without abandon. As far as I can tell alligators are giant muscles with a lot of teeth.

Cyprus swamps live up to expectation. Giant trees with submerged roots. And speaking of roots there are the abstract and mysterious Cyprus knees that reach up from the water. I’d like to say that wildlife abounds. But the abundance here is less than hoped for and a siren call of ecological ruin.

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.

So I am remembering. Those of you who have seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” were introduced, in a small sense, to the heady world of American Physics in the 1930’s and 40’s. I realized as I watched that movie that had I been born a generation earlier the world depicted in the film would in all likelihood have been my world. The people depicted in that film were our heroes and teachers a generation later. Hans Bethe, who features prominently was my Professor of Electrodynamics at Cornell in the 1970’s.

This past October, I had the opportunity to wander around on campus again. Cornell, for those of us who went there, was a magical place – maybe even more so for graduate students because it was after all part of someone else’s childhood. Cornell is an amazing place in October, when it is filled with autumn color. Back then the entirety of the Engineering Quad was ablaze with red ivies, long since removed because they were damaging the stone and brick.

So I wandered around in nostagia-land taking in the colors, and I came across the scene of Figure 1 overlooking Libe Slope and in the distance the canal to Lake Cayuga. Like I said yesterday, my heart and mind were filled with lasting memories. Every place had a memory.

After weeks of rain and even snow I was greeted this morning to an absolutely Homeric rosey fingered dawn. It made me thinks of what the coming months would bring and of a photograph that I took last July at Halibut Point in Rockport, MA. What is more summer than black-eyed Susies? So for me this photograph was the distilled essence of all my summers: the heat, the brilliant sunlight, the flowers, and the birds. Black-eyed Susies are a childhood flower. They are almost personified.

I remember vividly taking this photograph and that contributes a tripartite substance to the image. You take the image and in the moment it says “summer” to you. You are flooded with memories of all the summers of your life. It is quintessentially summer. And finally you carry around with you,”forever,” the memory of the taking of the image.

I think that in general when you take a photograph that you are “happy with,” the memory of the taking, the creative act and what it meant to you stays with you. Such is the magic of photography.

First full day of summer. I think it’s time to think of a nap and what better place than one soft and warm. So I an reminded of the photograph that I took at La Jolla cove this past January of a sea lion napping on a bed of blubber, trying not to itch her whiskers, and quite content to listen to the waves and watch the tourists with a sleepy eye.