HEROES

It was the definition of a seasonal change in this tropical paradise called Florida on that October morning. The weather was cooling and beginning to dry out. The sun was just barely launching its blaze across the river of grass called the Everglades. I woke up to the songs of the crickets and katydids surrounding me and the smell of campfire burning pine. My preference would have been to have slept a little longer but the cot was uncomfortable and not like sleeping in the comfort of your own bed. I pulled on my pants and slipped into my boots. Unzipping the door of the canvas tent and I stepped out into the dew covered grass.

I could see his outline in the haze as the soft morning haze hovered over the damp ground. He had taken an old tree stump, cut from a large loblolly pine tree that had been felled long before we arrived. Turning the log upright he used it as a seat. A small fire was flickering in front of him and his old beat up coffee pot was swinging just above the fire keeping it hot. Reflecting the light from the flames, his shadow spread across the grassy ground and danced along the edge of the clearing just beyond the tent where we had slept the night.

“Good Mornin,” I said while rubbing various parts of my body as if to jumpstart them into moving fluidly. Through a half yawn and a full stretch I moaned, “What’s for breakfast?”

He was a uncompromising man of few words and looked at me as he usually did with his head still facing the fire while raising his head just enough to see me by lifting his eyes. With a cold as steel and resolute look he recoils, “Ya catch it.” I glanced away as if hit by a stone, but knowing that beneath this shield of unrelenting armor was the heart of a gentle man. I stood there watching the flames of the fire echo from his leathered face lined with the years of hard work. Making his life starting at only 12 years with riding the rails through the Depression, trying to simply survive in a world when he should have been playing stickball with his friends.

Earning a dollar anywhere he could, he was a Steeplejack in the Northeast, then worked on a dairy farm. Later in life he turned to the construction business building skyscrapers and monuments to the rich men of power and authority. He worked hard everyday in the sweltering sun to support his family, and I knew that this weekend meant a lot to him.

His arms were immense and defined from years of laborious work. When he pulled the steaming hot coffee mug to his face and I could see his brawny arm muscles define themselves while stretching his sleeves as if they were about to burst. Without a word, I turned and picked up my fishing rod and headed to the water. Nearing the vast expanse of river grass ahead of me I could see the streaks of red, blue and gray from dawns creation shooting towards the heavens like a 4th of July celebration. Quietly sneaking down the path to the water the sticks and grass clicked gently beneath my feet warning the fish that I was on my way. Hardly able to hold my excitement, I thought about the catch and couldn’t wait to wet my line with that first cast. Fishing was my favorite, and truthfully, I was getting really hungry.

Approaching an open space near the water, my eyes were drawn to the sound of the Osprey’s call. Gliding gently overhead his sharp eyes spied every move below in search of sustenance. The Great Heron walked the waters edge while sharing the space with two small mud chickens that would paddle behind his longs legs as if to chase the big bird along in his quest. I stopped and watched the Heron as if out of reverence.

Quietly and ever so elegantly the long thin legs pushed through the water without a sound. The intensity of the his gaze never leaving the water while meandering, as if floating through the surface. Without warning this majestic creature shoots his head into the dark water with lightning speed and as he pulls his head back, a small fish wriggles at the tip of his massive yellow beak in an attempt escape his infallible grip of death. This small meal foreordained to satisfy the need of the Great Heron as the cycle of life in this wonder called the Everglades moves on without approbation.

With a fling of his long graceful gray neck, he flips the fish in the air and catches it perfectly, head first. I wanted to applause as if at the circus watching a juggler toss his art into the air! The big bird glances in my direction to see me standing in the shadows, and with a slight bend of his powerful legs, his wings spread across the great waters, and with a graceful push of the air he sails off in search of a less human populated area.

Replacing the presence of the Heron with my own the mud chickens showed their displeasure and cackled as if to tell me that I was disturbing their personal territory. Perhaps I was. I glance towards them and pay them no mind. Shortly afterwards they accept me and continue to quietly glide back and forth across the smooth black water. At the bend of one of the many streams that run throughout the Everglades I gaze over the black water looking for the right spot to grace my first cast.

The great expanse of river grass lay before me while the gentle current of water moved quietly and unwearied towards the northwest bending gently through the grass and the small cypress that lined the rocky banks. A natural stream, untouched by man, flowing long before I arrived, carving its life through the limestone and rock affected by thousands of years of the caressing tender hands of nature. This was a natural world where man was the invader presenting himself to conquer all in his path.

Engulfed within all this glory and natural beauty I could not help but think that perhaps hundreds of years before me, this gentle watercourse did not have a road within walking distance. Eventually a small footpath was worn well by the natives of this land, and that this was just a tiny tributary flowing south from Lake Okeechobee continuing a meandering passageway to the river and onto the ocean. To the west a small village that worked the land to survive and found this small torrent to traverse between trading posts or other villages throughout the boggy vastness and south to the Miami River or perhaps across the county seat to Chokoloskee Bay. I thought about the Tequesta and the Calusa Indian tribes. They spread across the Atlantic coast from north of Palm Beach to Miami and on to the Keys with a village on Cape Sable at the southern end of the Florida peninsula in the 16th Century. They had built their villages and cared for their families at the mouths of these rivers and streams creating what would become their history. Throughout the area and on inlets from the Atlantic Ocean to inland waters, and on barrier islands and the Keys they hunted, traded, and lived among this natural beauty.

Today, nothing much is left of these great tribes except some artifacts and shell mounds. Lost in the details in the name of progress as the new pioneers came to conquer and build cities with concrete monuments to their own existence these peaceful people were destroyed. Their spirit is kept alive by our writings and pieces of existence swallowed by mother earth.

I cast my line with perfect precision across the black water to a small stand of river grass. I had seen some action on the surface and felt that it was a good choice to start. I knew that in this sport, talent played as well as luck, and it was, after all, called fishin’ not catchin’. Of course, I came up dry, but that was the funny thing about the elusive Bass. Whether a he or a she, they both had one thing in common and that was a mind of their own but I knew that their was a catch in that shallow. I could see the small swirl of a tail and that presentation was the key to breakfast. Too close and you will spook the prey. Too far and the cast is wasted. The cast had to be perfect.

I had to be perfect.

The Bass is an opportunistic creature and will bite just about anything in their path but if you are not careful they will be gone. Many times it is just out of pure meanness that they bite because they don’t want it there, and that is what I was counting on.

I cast my line in a different direction as if to say, “I don’t care that you are over there”. After giving my prey a period of relief, and I think a lapse of memory, I reeled in and prepared to cast once again. This time in the exact spot that would force my prey to react.

Preparing my presentation, I could feel the pressure of the lure as the rod gently passed my head. As the lure rounded, I felt the flip of the pressure and my attempt to release the trigger at the opportune time for the bait to land perfectly without force. It had to be perfect. I watched the lure float through the air as if in slow motion, the sun’s first rays hitting it with a brilliant reflection. Floating through the morning dew as if being carried by a magical hand to be delivered at the doorstep of my breakfast. I watched in earnest amazement as my line, every so gently, floated across the air above the black water guiding my tasteful and beautiful lure it all it’s glorious colors across a small limb only to dangle mere inches above my prey’s grasp.

I closed my eyes in pure exasperation.

I give the line a tug and a small tree branch waves at me as if to say, gotcha, now go away. I pulled the line straight, and leveled my rod pulling tightly and stepping gently backwards until I heard the snap and unmistakable zing of a line without lure flying towards me at the speed of light. Covered in monofilament, wrapped around my cap and feeling a bit dejected without my breakfast, a hand touches my shoulder.

“Whatcha doin?” He asked as if he had not seen anything.

“Fishin’, what else,” shrugging my shoulders trying to be as tall as possible.

“Squirrels?” As he scans the water.

“Yup” I said without hesitation and all the bravado of a master hunter, “but he got away.”

I mustered all my strength to show him that I had not failed to catch breakfast, but I was just, sort of, delayed a bit.

He kneels down to look at my rod only to see that the line had stretched and would have to be replaced. Without condemnation, he silently takes up his rod.

“Mind if I give it a try?”

I looked up at this big man standing next to me and said with confidence,

“I don’t think the squirrels will mind.”

With an unyielding look of determination and fierce focus on his face that I had seen a hundred times before, those steel blue eyes threw a gaze across the black water. I watched his arm glide gently to his side as he flicked his wrist with the precision of a master, landing his lure in the perfect spot.

The lure hit the water and the line softly stretched across the expanse falling onto the water. I watch the lure dive below the surface in a splash and bob to the surface. Within a split second the tip of his rod strains and he pulls it back, his muscles bulge from the shirt.

A large Bass clears the water and leaps into the air reflecting the acrobatic talents of the best circus performer. After a few glorious minutes of a gallant fight, he reels this masterful creature onto shore and looks at me with a slight grin, and says, “That’s one.”

Again and again his perfect cast floats across the water landing without effort and each time repeating the acrobatics. A life of struggle, a life unbalanced, a life pursued but persecuted by so many, a life not easy culminates in the eyes of a child as a hero comes to the rescue.

My father and I walked back to the camp that morning with the warm sun at our backs and our future ahead of us. As we came around the corner I could see the campfire burning with a hint of smoke coming from the embers. I lay the bounty of fish on a large rock and he pulls his long knife sharpened by years of delicate use from a well worn leather sheath on his belt. With the skill of a surgeon he filets our catch. A well worn and seasoned skillet lays waiting for the abundance provided by nature, and a pot of grits slowly bubbles up.

It was a good day.