Good Beer Hunting, Jamaal Lemon, April 2, 2024
We were headed to the Florida Everglades. I must have smiled the entire 80-mile drive from Palm Beach County to Homestead, Florida. I’d never been, yet always wanted to visit the Everglades National Park. The idea of being within an arm’s reach of exotic birds and fish—and the possibility of a panther sighting—had long intrigued me. Even better: This trip was a chance to experience the historic wetland with my son.
Joseph’s encounters with Florida’s outdoors to that point had been minimal, aside from the occasional sightings of squirrels or iguanas. Only months before, we’d relocated from Baltimore City to West Palm Beach, and it was energizing to fill my recreational schedule with fishing and swimming. I wanted that for him, too, and the reality of casually walking past alligators and egrets was about to really be a thing for my son.
We entered the park at the Shark Valley Visitor Center and headed for an airboat tour. The solitude of the space entranced us, the SOS signal on my phone confirming we were truly behind God’s back, deep in the Everglades.
JoJo beamed when the tour guide full-throttled the airboat over the shallow water. Wearing his noise-canceling headphones, the only 5-year-old on the boat asked the guide every question a curious kid might imagine: “Excuse me, are there sharks in there?” “Do alligators eat boats?” “Why are blue herons blue?” To my son’s benefit, every hilarious inquiry was met with the guide’s patiently enthusiastic response—with biological and scientific proof to support the answers, capped with a laugh for good measure.
Then, JoJo asked a question that made everyone on the boat chortle with anticipation of the guide’s response: “Where does the water come from?”
“The Everglades has a water quantity and water quality issue," explains Begone Cazalis, the director of communications for The Everglades Foundation. If there’s not enough clean water moving south to the Everglades, sources become scarce. Miami’s Biscayne Aquifer provides fresh water to 5 million people—including the hundreds moving to the area every day—yet it continues to shrink.
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