Ok, it was far from my first time, but it was the first time that a friend’s five year old daughter had experienced it, and the first time that two of my friends had kayaked alongside dolphins.  Magical, whimsical, they called it. Always.

Going out on the water, even in the same place all the time, always feels like a first.  Sometimes I am out solely for the purpose of building some speed and getting in a good workout, and I still find myself at some moment, sitting in stillness and enjoying the serenity of it all. I find myself enjoying the breeze, sticking my toes over the edge into the water and looking into the water to see if fish or dolphin or sting rays are below me.  Sometimes you have to pause and watch the pelicans hit the water at high force from 40 feet up.  

Whether the bustling streets of Miami took me there, or I was surrounded by the seclusion of the Everglades, the water and the wind have always had the same ability - to sooth me and make me want to slow down.  The difference between nature in a busy city and a preserved natural area is that less people expect it to still be happening around a city.   They know what they do there every day, they know what they see, but they don’t always stop and think about what happens below the surface.   They may not even be able to imagine life beyond the city, even with all of its challenges of rush hour and runoff.  To me, that doesn’t make the city’s wildlife any less or more special; just another reason to love its resilience and respect it.

Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised to realize that there are so many areas left that are not yet built up.  The region around Bluffton, South Carolina is one of those.  It might be building up now, but there is so much space that it seems very far from turning into a place like South Florida, where the majority of trees are those replanted by landscapers.  All over the world, with all of the mitigation and battles to save lands that have already been altered, those too far gone to save or on the brink, it makes you really hope and wish that those planning today's developments are learning from the past and thinking toward the future to protect what we have.