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[10/12/99]

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The Glades with its vast subtropical wilderness is a good five hours away at the other end of the state. But the stork is here anyway. It is knee-deep in a drainage ditch -- cars whizzing by on their way to Disney World without a notion of whatever it can be -- and it is doing what wading birds like it have been doing in Florida since before anything like a human or a theme park arrived. It is sweeping its curved beak through the cloudy water, hoping to connect with something alive there.

My friend Terry, an old college pal who will paddle the other end of our canoe, misses the bird altogether, not because he is obtuse, but because he lives on the opposite rim of the country and his senses are already saturated with local exotica. It will take a mighty dose of melodrama to jar him.

"Wood stork," I say, pointing with one hand and driving us onto Interstate 4 with the other.

"Is that a rare bird?" asks Terry earnestly, and I tell him that it is. I say I am both heartened to see it and disturbed that it has ranged so far outside its natural home. Not so long ago, this bird with the head that seems fire-charred -- this "iron head" -- was so integral to the Glades it was considered a barometer of its health. But the Everglades are on the brink, have been for a while now. The wood stork is trying to roll with this change, ranging far outside its historic territory.

Terry is from three decades worth of my past, a fraternity brother and ex-jock, a reformed party animal like myself seeking redemption in the solitude of distant natural places. Individually, we have struggled to unravel the jumble of civilized threads to get at the nugget of ourselves buried inside. From its discovery, we have come to learn this nature offered solace, living Whitmanesque lessons in the values of singularity and tolerance.

And so Terry hikes east of Los Angeles, back into places like Death Valley and Borrego Springs and camps there. I live in Florida and kayak on any wild body of water I can find -- the St. Francis Dead River, the Wekiva, the Mosquito Lagoon.

Now we are headed together to the Glades, to canoe deep into its distant western boundary in a hunt for the "Watson Place," a pre-Columbian Calusa midden mound. It is a 40-acre composite of shell and stunted tropical foliage, a thread between us and the time-wronged desperado who once lived there.

Like the Glades and the wood stork, we too are on the brink, aging jocks ranging beyond what is safe and known. In this way, we sweep through the experiences that still lie before us, hoping to connect with something alive and vital. All we are sure of is that we have come to appreciate wilderness for the way it lays itself down on the soul.

Unlike other men who seek solace in this way, we don't carry traditional props; we are not hunters or dapper L.L. Bean campers. I carry a set of old binoculars to watch for avi-fauna, but the truth is, beyond raptors and tropical wading birds, I'm lost unless a species appears clear and unobstructed in the scope. As for our gear, it is jerry-rigged and stuffed into duffels and garbage bags and plastic buckets. Instead of giant foil pouches of official freeze-dried camp food, I have brought noodles-in-a-cup and tins of tuna and chicken. We have granola bars that look and taste like Oreos compressed into little rectangles. I imagine Jack Kerouac, when he went up on Desolation Peak out West, might have packed like this.

But I do place a lot of significance on a compass and the correct nautical map to lead me in and out of untamed places like this. Each tiny paper squiggle, each logarithmic degree corresponds to something tangible -- an oxbow or bar or tiny islet. Once ground-truthed, these coordinates can sometimes nudge the senses, linking near-meaningless geographic names to remarkable places on the landscape. Ahead in the Glades, my map promises Pavilion and Buzzard Keys, Chokoloskee and Rabbit Key Passes, Lostman's and Chatham Rivers.

I have tucked both compass and map inside a waterproof seal-lock baggy I will carry on my lap when we finally reach our canoe. Also in the baggy is a paperback copy of Peter Matthiessen's novel "Killing Mr. Watson."

Next page | The journey of two "dangerous" men