Back into the mangroves
This old photo page began as a simple thumbnail gallery from my 2003 Everglades backcountry canoe-camping trip. The photos still carry that early-digital-camera feeling, but the memory behind them is timeless: paddling narrow mangrove canoe trails, camping out on the islands, and feeling very small in a huge, wet, living wilderness.
This trip was also tied to the Everglades Hostel, one of those wonderful hostel places that had a huge influence on my traveling life. I stayed there many times over the years, probably more than a dozen times, and it was exactly the kind of place where you could meet other travelers, share ideas, and suddenly find yourself heading off into the backcountry with people you had just met but already trusted enough to share a small adventure.
On this trip there were four of us, and we spent a couple of days paddling through the mangrove canoe trails and camping on the islands. It was wild, humid, beautiful, and a little bit intimidating in the best possible way. The Everglades are one of those places where the quiet is never really quiet. There is wind in the grass, water moving under the boat, birds calling from somewhere you cannot quite see, and the constant awareness that you are visiting a place that belongs to wildlife first.
That was the magic of the trip: the hostel connection, the simple canoes, the island camps, the mangrove tunnels, and the feeling of being fully inside the Everglades rather than just looking at it from the road. Click any photo below to open the full-size image from the images folder.
