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The Wilder Heart of Florida: More Writers Inspired by Florida Nature
Fall under the spell of Florida's natural environment
In this captivating collection, Florida’s most notable authors, poets, and environmentalists take readers on a journey through the natural wonders of the state. Continuing in the legacy of the beloved classic The Wild Heart of Florida, this book features thirty-four pieces by a new slate of well-known and emerging writers.
In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff describes the beauty of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. Environmental writer Cynthia Barnett listens to seashells on Sanibel Island. Legendary journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas records the sights and sounds of the Everglades in the 1920s. Miccosukee elder Buffalo Tiger relates traditional stories of his community’s deep relationship with the land. Presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco muses on the shifting vista of the ocean in “Some Days the Sea.”
These writers and many others recount memories of how their lives have been enriched by the state’s varied and brilliant landscapes. Some tell of encounters with alligators, pythons, manatees, turtles, and otters, while others marvel at the unique character of flowing springs and piney scrub. Together, they highlight the need to protect pristine ecosystems and restore ones that have been damaged due to development. The Wilder Heart of Florida will inspire readers to explore and celebrate the Florida wilderness.
In this captivating collection, Florida’s most notable authors, poets, and environmentalists take readers on a journey through the natural wonders of the state. Continuing in the legacy of the beloved classic The Wild Heart of Florida, this book features thirty-four pieces by a new slate of well-known and emerging writers.
In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff describes the beauty of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. Environmental writer Cynthia Barnett listens to seashells on Sanibel Island. Legendary journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas records the sights and sounds of the Everglades in the 1920s. Miccosukee elder Buffalo Tiger relates traditional stories of his community’s deep relationship with the land. Presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco muses on the shifting vista of the ocean in “Some Days the Sea.”
These writers and many others recount memories of how their lives have been enriched by the state’s varied and brilliant landscapes. Some tell of encounters with alligators, pythons, manatees, turtles, and otters, while others marvel at the unique character of flowing springs and piney scrub. Together, they highlight the need to protect pristine ecosystems and restore ones that have been damaged due to development. The Wilder Heart of Florida will inspire readers to explore and celebrate the Florida wilderness.
210 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 2, 2021
11 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Jack Emerson Davis
12 books64 followersJack Emerson Davis is Professor of History and the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities at the University of Florida. He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 9, 2021
A terrific book! A great addition to any bookshelf full of Florida environmental books, with selections by such luminaries as Lauren Groff, Jack E. Davis, Cynthia Barnett and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
August 23, 2022
I’m not a Florida native, but I definitely love my adopted state. This book is a collection of essays about the enchanting, wild weirdness of Florida. Some of the authors are definitely better at drawing you in then others, and some are a little dry. But overall this book was a nice escape from real life at a stressful time at work where it was needed.
December 7, 2021
I cannot praise this collection of poetry and essays enough. So, instead, I am going to send copies to lots of people. It is fantastic.
February 6, 2024
This book was a little different than I thought it would be, but I still enjoyed hearing the perspectives of the different voices that were featured throughout.
June 4, 2022
This is an exquisitely edited collection of stories and poems written about Florida by people who know and care about Florida's past, present, and future. Highly recommended reading for all Floridians or those who want to understand more about this incredible state and appreciate clear and resounding nature writing at its best.
Several quotes from the book, citations as indicated.
Introduction
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek (1942)
"I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to." /3
Lauren Groff
The Story under the Story
Not long ago, on a run on Paynes Prairie, I stopped to watch an 8-ft alligator, his spine bedecked in clumps of grassy mud and water hyacinths as though he'd donned camouflage, creeping through the shallows. I saw him make his way toward an Ibis standing one- legged in the water, glowing like a candle, utterly nonchalant that these were to be his last few moments upon the earth. / 9
This is my own perfect idea of Florida, yet it is only the topmost of the visions I have of this state, which are infinite and often contradictory. Place is never single - it is multiple; we all see the places we love as palimpsests of uncountable layers. Scratch shallowly, and you will find weary daily ideas, which can shift based on very little, blood-sugar dips or an irritation at the empty coffee pot. I have overheard a snide remark in a cafe, and suddenly the entire state of Florida seemed bleak and loveless. Yet I have also seen an 8-ft rat snake stretched in the sun across my path, his scales gleaming in the midsummer heat like beaten copper, the whole stretch of him beneath the skin a pure and clenching muscle, and the gift of him within the otherwise ordinary day made Florida and to a place worthy of the gods. / 10
Charles Lee
My First Audubon Trip Hasn't Ended Yet...
Depending on how long the small fish were in the gut of the tern, some specimens left hanging in the nets or dropping to the ground beneath the birds could be quite fresh, almost alive. My job was to gather the whole undigested specimens and place them in a jar of formaldehyde. These fish were not ordinary minnows. The small fish living close to the surface and weed lines include tiny juvenile versions of the world's greatest game fish. Among the tiny fish cradled in my hand on the way to the smelly formaldehyde jar or small-scale copies of bluefin tuna, king mackerel, wahoo, sailfish, marlin, and dolphin. / 34
David Mccally
Florida Boy
Nature neither has a final destination, nor does it stand still, but environmental change caused by the increasing power of human agency can be ignored only at our peril, especially in Florida. / 43
Gabbie Buendia
The River That Raised Me
Accompanying this moment of awe was a sudden flush of gratitude. / 49
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Up the Okalawaha
Well, really, after this who would not expect to be disappointed? Who, going with such fanfaraonade of expectations, would not come on back a little worse for experience? / 95-96
They seemed a grave, taciturn, unsmiling race, long haired, bearded, and roughly attired, with the shallow complexion and dark eyes that gave intimations of Minorcan blood. /98
Claire Strom
Wilderness from the Water
My paddles through Florida waterways expose the state's raw natural beauty, but that same beauty elides a complicated past of settlement, deforestation, industrialization, and slavery. Finding my way into the inaccessible, wet heart of Florida, I have also discovered those obscured histories that lie beneath and around the water. / 130
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Excerpts from The Gallery
Do you own a pine tree? Then you are lucky. But if you appreciate it, you are more than that. You have a genuine eye for beauty, which is another word for spiritual common-sense. /145
The Natural Aesthetic of the Naked God
Finding relief in the fractured shade of a longleaf pine, I cushion myself in a bed of needles. A high-decibel truncated squeal couples with a brilliant white flash to announce a bald eagle's presence. Following its looping, spherical flight sets the rhythm for deciphering hints of the divine. "Nature is too thin a screen," Transcendentalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote: "the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere." /149
Like us, our arboreal relatives are relational beings. They thrive in communities and work together to nurture growth, fight off disease, and produce life's most beneficial products: clean air and water. Approximately 1.5 billion years ago the arboreal gene pool branched out, setting the path for our species evolution. Today, humans and trees share 25% of the same genes, and the survival of both species depends on their communal instinct.
Genes are passed through individuals, but human evolution is predicated on forming complex groups. Thus, the brain is wired in two basic ways: individuals focus on either immediate self-interest, or they think in a more reflective and rational manner about how to improve their common welfare. These impulses are in perpetual conflict and theologians, not surprisingly, argue that religion is intrinsic to survival because it translates our propensity for altruism into ritual.
... The poster child of unrestrained growth, Florida is in peril. Its voracious appetite for development feeds on uplands, which has turned the states remnant xeric systems into artifacts, accounting for only 4% of the historic total. Even more alarming, Florida's unique system of land and water has been engineered into the backdrop for suburbia. Awash and toxic algae, red tide, and saltwater intrusion, the specter is matched by the state's mechanized death. In road-rage-ravaged metropolitan Orlando, a driving fatality occurs every 44 hours, pedestrians are impaled weekly, and bicyclists die at an equally foreboding rate.
/ 149 - 151
Mark Jerome Walters
Don't Mourn the Orange
Nostalgia is memory on a bender. It is to mourn the loss of orange groves without a thought for the original desert gardens citrus stole away. It is to mourn how citrus greening ate the heart out of the orange without a care for how the orange had long since eaten the heart out of the wild Florida scrub. /158
Frances Susanna Nevill
Florida Is a Pretty Girl
Florida [is] plagued with human-induced algae blooms swamping her shores; piping hot pavement covering her surface with a never-ending series of road projects; water siphoned and hauled off in trucks; minerals mined, trees butchered, pesticides strangling the scent of orange blossoms. Oh, and that distinct scent of orange blossoms might just be something remembered by old-timers in just a few decades....One has to ask: where are [Florida's proverbial] parents? ... I mean, how much more can a girl take? /185
Several quotes from the book, citations as indicated.
Introduction
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek (1942)
"I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to." /3
Lauren Groff
The Story under the Story
Not long ago, on a run on Paynes Prairie, I stopped to watch an 8-ft alligator, his spine bedecked in clumps of grassy mud and water hyacinths as though he'd donned camouflage, creeping through the shallows. I saw him make his way toward an Ibis standing one- legged in the water, glowing like a candle, utterly nonchalant that these were to be his last few moments upon the earth. / 9
This is my own perfect idea of Florida, yet it is only the topmost of the visions I have of this state, which are infinite and often contradictory. Place is never single - it is multiple; we all see the places we love as palimpsests of uncountable layers. Scratch shallowly, and you will find weary daily ideas, which can shift based on very little, blood-sugar dips or an irritation at the empty coffee pot. I have overheard a snide remark in a cafe, and suddenly the entire state of Florida seemed bleak and loveless. Yet I have also seen an 8-ft rat snake stretched in the sun across my path, his scales gleaming in the midsummer heat like beaten copper, the whole stretch of him beneath the skin a pure and clenching muscle, and the gift of him within the otherwise ordinary day made Florida and to a place worthy of the gods. / 10
Charles Lee
My First Audubon Trip Hasn't Ended Yet...
Depending on how long the small fish were in the gut of the tern, some specimens left hanging in the nets or dropping to the ground beneath the birds could be quite fresh, almost alive. My job was to gather the whole undigested specimens and place them in a jar of formaldehyde. These fish were not ordinary minnows. The small fish living close to the surface and weed lines include tiny juvenile versions of the world's greatest game fish. Among the tiny fish cradled in my hand on the way to the smelly formaldehyde jar or small-scale copies of bluefin tuna, king mackerel, wahoo, sailfish, marlin, and dolphin. / 34
David Mccally
Florida Boy
Nature neither has a final destination, nor does it stand still, but environmental change caused by the increasing power of human agency can be ignored only at our peril, especially in Florida. / 43
Gabbie Buendia
The River That Raised Me
Accompanying this moment of awe was a sudden flush of gratitude. / 49
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Up the Okalawaha
Well, really, after this who would not expect to be disappointed? Who, going with such fanfaraonade of expectations, would not come on back a little worse for experience? / 95-96
They seemed a grave, taciturn, unsmiling race, long haired, bearded, and roughly attired, with the shallow complexion and dark eyes that gave intimations of Minorcan blood. /98
Claire Strom
Wilderness from the Water
My paddles through Florida waterways expose the state's raw natural beauty, but that same beauty elides a complicated past of settlement, deforestation, industrialization, and slavery. Finding my way into the inaccessible, wet heart of Florida, I have also discovered those obscured histories that lie beneath and around the water. / 130
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
Excerpts from The Gallery
Do you own a pine tree? Then you are lucky. But if you appreciate it, you are more than that. You have a genuine eye for beauty, which is another word for spiritual common-sense. /145
The Natural Aesthetic of the Naked God
Finding relief in the fractured shade of a longleaf pine, I cushion myself in a bed of needles. A high-decibel truncated squeal couples with a brilliant white flash to announce a bald eagle's presence. Following its looping, spherical flight sets the rhythm for deciphering hints of the divine. "Nature is too thin a screen," Transcendentalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote: "the glory of the omnipresent God bursts through everywhere." /149
Like us, our arboreal relatives are relational beings. They thrive in communities and work together to nurture growth, fight off disease, and produce life's most beneficial products: clean air and water. Approximately 1.5 billion years ago the arboreal gene pool branched out, setting the path for our species evolution. Today, humans and trees share 25% of the same genes, and the survival of both species depends on their communal instinct.
Genes are passed through individuals, but human evolution is predicated on forming complex groups. Thus, the brain is wired in two basic ways: individuals focus on either immediate self-interest, or they think in a more reflective and rational manner about how to improve their common welfare. These impulses are in perpetual conflict and theologians, not surprisingly, argue that religion is intrinsic to survival because it translates our propensity for altruism into ritual.
... The poster child of unrestrained growth, Florida is in peril. Its voracious appetite for development feeds on uplands, which has turned the states remnant xeric systems into artifacts, accounting for only 4% of the historic total. Even more alarming, Florida's unique system of land and water has been engineered into the backdrop for suburbia. Awash and toxic algae, red tide, and saltwater intrusion, the specter is matched by the state's mechanized death. In road-rage-ravaged metropolitan Orlando, a driving fatality occurs every 44 hours, pedestrians are impaled weekly, and bicyclists die at an equally foreboding rate.
/ 149 - 151
Mark Jerome Walters
Don't Mourn the Orange
Nostalgia is memory on a bender. It is to mourn the loss of orange groves without a thought for the original desert gardens citrus stole away. It is to mourn how citrus greening ate the heart out of the orange without a care for how the orange had long since eaten the heart out of the wild Florida scrub. /158
Frances Susanna Nevill
Florida Is a Pretty Girl
Florida [is] plagued with human-induced algae blooms swamping her shores; piping hot pavement covering her surface with a never-ending series of road projects; water siphoned and hauled off in trucks; minerals mined, trees butchered, pesticides strangling the scent of orange blossoms. Oh, and that distinct scent of orange blossoms might just be something remembered by old-timers in just a few decades....One has to ask: where are [Florida's proverbial] parents? ... I mean, how much more can a girl take? /185
September 21, 2022
This book was such a mixed bag. There are some good stories of author's past experiences that inspire you to go look at these unique places and see why it's so important to save them. On the flip side there's stories about past Florida and then the finger pointing starts and it's all doom and gloom and it's everyone else's fault. These stories definitely made me feel like the author was trying to alienate the reader and try to make them feel bad about themselves because we are destroying their Florida (and that's coming from someone who works in conservation in FL). All well intentioned essays, but there's a good number of stories worthy of just skipping because it doesn't do what I think the book is trying to do (inspire people to be more knowledgeable about conservation issues in FL and get involved in saving it.)
February 3, 2022
Many in the collection were thought provoking, while others brought a smile, but all reflected the immense diversity in the “Land of Flowers”.
August 9, 2024
This collection of poems and stories creates a beautiful and captivating picture of Florida's wilderness that locals and those interested in Florida can appreciate. The perspectives captured by the various authors over the last hundred years create a strong picture of the habitats in Florida and the impacts people make on the land. The diversity of works makes this book enjoyable for readers of all types. Each author's perspective adds to the story of Florida, creating an overarching picture of its history, the people, and the land.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews