Hayden's Last Post

   My internship here at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is coming to a close within the next two weeks, and accordingly, this will be my last blog post. Almost 6 months has elapsed since my internship started here, and it's simultaneously felt like a lifetime and a split second in time. It seemed there was no one singular post to leave on, so I wanted to talk about some highlights of my experience here at Corkscrew and Southwest Florida. Let's get sentimental.
    I arrived at Corkscrew on September 5, 2017, just 5 days before the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin made landfall south of Naples. The destruction it wreaked on Corkscrew and Naples has been fleshed out enough, but from my end of things it was a once in a lifetime experience that I honestly wish to never experience again. I stayed here at Corkscrew through Irma, and sheltered in the Blair visitor center. As the eye wall passed over the Blair center on September 10, I will never forget seeing the hurricane rip through the pine flatwoods surrounding the visitor center. An entire forest of Slash Pine and Cabbage Palm in fluid motion bent and swayed westward with each band of wind and pouring rain, yet the chaos outside was muted by the thick concrete walls and high-impact resistant windows that enclose the Blair Center. There was nothing quite like pulling a chair up to the door and watching one of the most powerful forces of nature that exists tear through Corkscrew.
    I'll also never forget the following month, where every day was spent out in the late Summer heat clearing Cypress needles and branches stripped by Irma off of the boardwalk and clearing Corkscrew's facilities of enormous Slash Pines that had finally succumbed to the +100 mph winds. For a brief moment at Corkscrew, all of the staff, each with their own respective backgrounds and department priorities, came together to accomplish one mission: recovery.
    Another memory of type 2 fun came from my first non-boardwalk related work activity when I joined the Research department to complete our first week of aquatic fauna surveys at Panther Island and at Corkscrew. It was my first introduction to wildlife surveying, and my first week spent entirely knee deep in the swamp. The humidity, the scorching sun, and the monotony of the sampling process itself couldn't sour seeing the most beautiful sunrises through the fog and mist shrouding stands of Slash Pine and a purple sea of blooming Muhly Grass. I ventured into a cypress dome for the first time as a part of our survey area, and stood in a small pond in absolute awe looking up at ancient cypress trees with sheaths of resurrection ferns draping the upper branches, listening to woodpeckers make a ruckus.
    I can't also forget when in the process of driving a swamp buggy with Resource Manager Allyson Webb at Panther Island, one of the front tires of the buggy popped off of its axle and floated away in a puddle in the road as we sat in a state of shock that quickly developed into a moment of serious laughter.
    Naturally, I will also never forget the sheer beauty of Corkscrew, primarily from a plant community perspective. Standing out on the exit boardwalk during the sunset and looking north over the wet prairie where 3 main ecotones of swamp ecosystems coincide, and waiting for the same group of Black Bellied Whistling Ducks to settle into the marsh to forage during the evening was a favorite sight of mine. Watching the sunset filter its last golden beams over the Pond Cypress and wet prairie and into the pines around Plume Hunter's camp was pure magic every time. Lest I forget about the  enormous stretches of blooming wildflowers at Panther Island that shifted at the interchange of the wet and dry season seasons, or standing in the pine flatwoods to the south of the visitor center and hearing the wind whip through the upper canopy of the Slash Pines and feeling it gently filter down into the understory of saw palmetto, wax myrtle, and salt bush.
   In my 6 months here, I feel like I saw something new and spectacular every day. It wasn't necessarily earth-shattering stuff, like seeing a panther (which finally happened just this week) or seeing the most spectacular sunset in my lifetime. Each day, I learned something new about wildlife behavior, the ecosystems of South Florida, plant phenology and reproduction, or shared a new experience with a coworker. Corkscrew in its abstract sense is a spectacular place, but the people who work here at the Swamp add a special human component to it. I learned so much about resource management techniques, equipment maintenance and repairs, and large-scale research projects operating on grand temporal scales. I met some amazing volunteers who took time out of their day to teach me something new or even show me a new experience entirely like when Ralph Arwood took me down to Big Cypress to help him with his acoustic bat monitoring project.
    All these mushy platitudes aside, what made this experience particularly enjoyable for me was that it was so warm here the entire duration of my internship. I strongly detest winter and being cold in general, and spending the winter months here at Corkscrew gave me a sweet sense of satisfaction and gratitude for rarely if ever having to bundle up into multiple layers of clothes.
   I will definitely be sad to leave here the first weekend of March, but I am excited for what is to come. In April, I will be starting a new job at Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas as a seasonal resource management technician performing a host of different duties. I am absolutely certain that if it were not for my experience and time here at Corkscrew, I would not be gaining this sort of employment with an agency I have been trying to work with since graduating college.
    To all my coworkers I've had the privilege of working with- thank you for your guidance, willingness to teach, and most importantly your sense of humor. To all the alligators out in the swamp- I love you all. Each and every one of you are amazing creatures. And to my friends living in the Gatorhole intern dorm- it was too real. Peace.
-Hayden (conservation intern)