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A forceful exhalation wakes me before dawn: a blast of air, just beyond the beach. Minutes later, a second exhale, followed by another. Multiple breaths explode in the water. Stretching in my sleeping bag, I peer out to see the silhouettes of coastal bottlenose dolphins feeding in the shadowy water outside my tent. I climb outside. The sand is cold between my toes. San Carlos Bay gently ripples in a breeze, reflecting the waning light of a paper-thin moon, a dock light, and the red glow of a channel marker. Here on Florida's southwest coast, despite being only a tree line or two away from early morning commuters navigating the highways around Fort Myers, I feel myself on the edge of a continent, my only companions the constellations drifting overhead. That, and my kayak: the watercraft that has taken me so deftly to this place that feels so profoundly remote. This is morning—this is life—on the Great Calusa Blueway, a 190-mile stretch that threads Lee County's coastal waters and inland tributaries, skirting tidal flats and deepwater passes, shifting its salinity as it moves from fresh to salt and in between. Like a dotted line along a map's azure realms, a blueway is a trail that follows water from one point to another. (In the case of the Great Calusa, it begins on the freshwater Caloosahatchee and Imperial rivers, and is bridged by the saltwater bays, passes, and sounds of the Intracoastal Waterway.)[Read more…]
Photo credit: Michael Hanson READY TO SET-OFF? LET’S DO IT! [Watch the video…]
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