Like a flaming Seminole arrow, it points from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, its near-melting tar and gravel supported by centuries of seas shells and silt.
Mile after mile, along every foot of tangled green palmetto, a chain link fence keeps the quiescent swamp creatures at bay, like the tall barriers of an endless prison yard.
Beyond the fence, a canal parallels the road; a moat patrolled by leathery alligators and other indigineous reptiles. Above, hawks and falcons circle the skies like carnivorous search parties.
It's know as "Alligator Alley." It's a sanctuary of oddities, a steambath and furnace.
It's not hard to imagine the difficulty engineers and laborers had forging through the cypress swamps. The Everglades could only be breached using amphibious vehicles, helicopters, swamp-buggies, and airboats. And even then, it was a Panama-canal like effort.
On a sun-bleached wall, one worker wrote, "Please Lord, I've been a good man. So if I get cotton-mouth bit, or attacked by some of Oscar the Alligator's brothers, and if I get to that Big Job in the Sky, oh, please, Lord, let it be on dry land. Amen!"
The journey South on interstate 75 is one that everyone should make at least once in a lifetime. South, because that destination holds bikinis and blue waves and beautiful people. South, lured by the tropicana beat of Cuban music in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood.
Pigments of pink, coral, ochre, are everywhere - colors indigenous to Brazil or Havana, the Spanish Main and the Carribean. The sidewalks and strands filled with latin women strolling as if on fashion runways, captivating and beguiling; native. Beaches covered in sugary sand.
But the adventure is in the journey. Open vistas like African savannahs reach as far across the horizon as the eye can see, with only the curvature of the earth limiting the view. Each afternoon, anvil-like thunderheads gather in the distance, sometimes streaked with electric webs of lightning. The clouds menacing. Threatening - and promising - rain.
The air smells of hot organic incense. A Florida scent.
Alligator Alley is a menagerie of wildlife and a panorama of calm. Great bald eagles soar in circles over the dried husks of towering pines. Blue Herons and Cranes wander on stick-like legs through the shallows. Cormorands sun themselves on rocks with outstretched wings. And, on rare occasions, roseate spoonbills appear as if they had just stepped off a postcard.
On my return home, the sun set in ways described by untold writers, glorious and surreal. But after the sunset, when darkness settled over I-75, my feelings changed. I felt as if I was in Ohio or Kentucky - or anywhere. The magic disappeared, blotted by night.
I was back in a normal, mundane, non-Florida world. It was just two headlights and a radio, even as the Everglades passed by me in the darkness.
*****
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