Before somebody decided to build a town, and somebody else decided the town needed a beach- there was the mangrove forest here and not much else.
You cannot sail on the sea of the mangrove, Though in nearby areas folks have sawed channels through them so they can be traversed. If you are crazy enough to just 'go into' the mangrove where it affords you entrance, you will emerge, if you do emerge, drained of blood by insects and other creatures who would consume your body for their sustainence. In areas where the mangrove is navigable by a skiff or (please no!) jet-ski, you are amazed at the abundance of life that surrounds you. To find out how much, just find a spot and rest on the oars or shut down the engine and wait for a minute or two.
Above is a canopy of leaves and vines and flowering plants and rootless tendril looking hairballs and great termite and ant nests and delicate blossoms- and all these different birds flying through chasing a million crawling and buzzing and flying bugs and spiders and butterflies of all races and colors.
Near the water surface are varied crab-like critters- more than you'ld think could be so different one from another- and frog things, and lizard things, and salamander and newt and snail and worm things- all crawlng and slithering and darting and jumping from here to there, way too fast and abundant and diviersified to follow with only two eyes.
On the mangrove roots are growing mussels and oysters and limpids and other mollusks and bivalve creatures that decline indentification but are there thriving nonetheless.
And under black waters caused by tanin in the roots of the plants are the 'swirlies' that you never see but you know are there by the waters' evidence of something big moving fast beneath the surface. If you are very still in the boat and a big tarpon moves beneath you displacing the water supporting the skiff, you cant see a thing but you can tell right where he is- and then the surface wavelets radiate outward through root systems that descend like fingers of twisted and knarled wooden shafts.
The mangrove is a trip.
Somebody's got to take the picture.
On the next page you can look at the mangrove through the eyes of the artist - Elm Van Pelts' Lagoon
Please give it time to load - Elm is good at rendering detail.
