In 1999 when I set up camp 30 miles north of Everglades City deep in America’s jungle in the Big Cypress Everglades at Bear Island I didn’t know whether I’d last through the first night or not. The memory of this delightful spot to camp at the end of an almost impassable dirt road was embedded in my mind, but I had not camped since I was in the Boy Scouts when I was eleven years old. For me this was the place to be in February. I didn’t have to drive for hours to get there, I could begin enjoying nature first thing in the morning, so that’s why I camp, to be there. The place was warm, abounded with wildlife, there was no hunting season, there were few people and it was free. Wow! Warm and free, no wonder over the last eleven Februaries that I’ve been there, there has been more people each year.
    That first night it was only me in my “pup tent”, an old jeep that carried me there, some supplies, and a wood burning grill to cook on.  I made it through the first night and I was still there when the month ended four weeks later, even though the water pump quit in the Jeep and I had to ride my bike to town twice to get it fixed. I was in seventh heaven; everywhere I pointed my camera I captured a keeper photograph, but the sounds were intriguing and in a league of their own, but print has no dimension for sound. Each was a mystery in itself. Most of the time I didn’t know what was making those sounds and I couldn’t identify them, then, and for many it’s still that way. Some I’ve seen the maker doing it; others, someone has told me what it is, but many are made by insects and I never see them. If you’ve ever heard that sinister laughing noise of the anhinga, the slithering of a water moccasin through the grass, or been caught off guard by the crash of an alligator as it hits the water, you know what I’m trying to describe here. There’s a radio station you can tune into when you’re in the Everglades at FM 107.9 called Everglades Radio or at http://www.dep.state.fl.us/ern/ to listen to the sounds and get everglades info.  There’re many sounds in the other wild places I go in southern Texas, Arizona, Nevada & Utah and other places in the winters, but none have the abundant myriad of sounds as the Everglades. It reminds me of Tarzan’s Jungle on TV that enthralled me as a child.
    I’m up predawn, so I’m there when the show begins. After I make a big cup of coffee, a quart or so will do, I’m off on my morning walk. You would think there would be lots of sounds and animal action at night, but I’ve never seen or heard any except for the lightning bugs flickering; the jungle has a pretty silent night. At the first light of dawn begins the flocks of ibis leaving their roosts with the beating of hundreds of wings and chirping, cheeping, tweeting and twittering of the birds in the canopy. As soon as I can I want to be miles back on a trail away from the people when the sun appears. That’s where the panthers, bears, bobcats, owls and other critters are. Barred owls sometimes begin their “who cooks for you” and other guttural sounds before sunrise in a group effort and it can be an electrifying racket. What an alarm clock!  Sometimes the owls disturb the Limpkin and it lets out with a shrill wailing. It’s the screamer!
    My ears filter the sounds and my eyes are alerted by movement as I walk. The familiarity of places trigger memories of what I saw or heard in other times and I’m always surprised by how birds, animals and other critters are at the same place year after year and at the same time of day, too. I hear the murmur of baby alligators in several places, but I’m always wary of where the mother is. I’ve never seen an aggressive alligator, but they surely will protect their young.  There’s a pond on Perocchi Grade Trail where Methuselah the alligator lives. He’s at least 14 feet long and he used to jump from the bank into the water when I approached. The sound was like a huge tree crashing into the water. That was in the beginning of my visits here. Now he just lies there.  Is it old age or does he know he has nothing to fear from me? There was a hunting season for alligators this year. I hope he hasn’t become part of someone’s trophy room.
    The red shouldered hawk stands watch perched high in a cypress tree and sounds the alarm, kee-yeeer several times, meaning a humanoid is invading its space as I approach where Methuselah rules his pond, the night heron quawks, egrets and herons take flight with clattering squawks; and when it quiets I can hear the resonate boom, boom, boom drumming of a pileated wood pecker digging for breakfast, and the distant pumping sound of the bittern somewhere in the saw grass, the whistle of the swallow tailed kite as they dive and soar back up into the sky, then the loud chirp of the osprey who’s signaling from its nest to its mate to bring another fish.
    Then, as I pass the first act of nature’s show (better than any movie), I hear a rumbling like the trembling of an earthquake or a distant jet engine. It’s the bellowing of an alligator in heat somewhere off the trail. Wow, nature’s players have put on another fine show! And there’s a ton of other sounds that I have no idea what’s making them, and this only described a few moments of the show that goes on at every sunrise - but I can’t photograph a sound.