Snow Bird

“If you thought winter was over, think again,” the weatherman said. “A cold front is sweeping down from the north and will hit here tomorrow night. Get out those jackets and coats you put away. It’s dropping to 60, with inland areas down to 30. That’s cold.”

Perhaps I was the only person in south Florida to welcome the news and say goodbye to the record heat gripping its west coast. For the first time I truly appreciated that “cold” is a relative term. These predicted February temperatures constituted winter here. When I left Fairbanks in mid-month the mercury in the Yukon-Tanana Basins hovered between minus 55 and minus 70, a record cold snap for the decade. For awhile it looked as if I wouldn’t be able to fly out at all. Alaska Airlines said that it wouldn’t fly at minus 60 or colder, but the day I left town it turned a balmy minus 31. When I got off the plane in Florida the next day the temperature was 87 above. One hundred and forty two degrees difference in the highs between the two cities.

It seemed that people looked at me funny as I walked down the air-conditioned concourse that day. I soon realized that I was the only person wearing a hat, long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and carrying a jacket. Almost everyone else wore shorts and T-shirts. I also wondered if people were gawking because I was so pale. When I first came to Alaska, in the years before regular commuter flights to Hawaii and the advent of tanning salons, old-timers had a standard comment about sun-starved, swan-white Alaskans: “If you’re Outside in the winter, people see you and suspect one of two things: either you’re an Alaskan or an escaped convict.”

The concourse seemed to stretch for miles but eventually I came to a T with arrows pointing directions. Go left for baggage claim and ground transportation; go right for the Tanning Booth and Customs. Tanning Booth? Customs? I knew Florida was foreign territory but wondered what special customs warranted introduction? And, too, was it illegal to leave the airport without a tan, or at least a mild sunburn? I went left to the baggage and rental cars.

Stepping out of the air-conditioned terminal was like walking into an oven. Later I heard that the humidity was 90%.

It took about three hours to drive to my destination in a small town near the swamps of southwest Florida. Leaving Alaska at the coldest time of winter was a fluke; arriving in Florida during a summer-like heat wave mere coincidence. Except for a brief stint at an Army post near Washington, D.C. during the 60’s, this was my first trip east of the Mississippi. As a decades-long resident of Alaska, my outlook on life can be summarized as “provincial.”

Beaches, babes, and sunshine did not lure me south. I’d accepted an assignment to photograph Florida’s birds, alligators, and marsh and swamp habitats. I looked forward to seeing how these critters lived and to contrast their adaptations to the familiar animals at home. I’d been told to expect clear skies and temperatures in the 60’s. The heat spell was a shock. At home it hadn’t been 30 above in over two months. The radio seemed to frequently mention the “beautiful weather” and how “lucky we are to live in Florida.” Twice I heard comments about unseasonable mosquito hatches. Lucky me.

After making only two wrong turns I found my motel. Peak of winter tourism was fast approaching and campsites and accommodations were scarce. Before leaving home I finally was able to book a room some little distance from where I planned to start my explorations. At least on the road map it had looked close but you can’t see traffic on a map. Even before dawn and before rush hour the next day, it took over 20 minutes to drive to my first destination. In the evenings it took over an hour and a half, sometimes longer. It would be an understatement to describe the traffic as “heavy,” somewhat like saying that alligators have teeth. I’m a notoriously bad driver and the evening commute was white-knuckle. Cars seemed to be coming at me from all directions…and usually at speeds that in Fairbanks would trigger a police chase.

One particular evening the drive took almost three hours due to an ugly vehicle accident. The road was completely blocked and traffic backed up to Cuba. Traffic police detoured us around the wreck via a school parking lot. Two cars were upside down in the middle of the road surrounded by a dozen emergency vehicles, red and blue lights flashing.

The next night, again stuck in traffic, I saw more flashing lights but this time in front of a strip mall. Probably a robbery, I thought. When finally I inched to the intersection and stopped at the signal, I looked over at the store. There were no police cars at all. Instead two red lights flashed above a door at the end of the mall. The storefront was painted pink, the windows painted black. “XXX-Rated Videos” read the sign between the red lights. Another read “Adults Only.” Just as the signal changed and horns began to honk, announcing my turn to drive another half-block, I read the banner stretched across the entire lower-half of the storefront. It said in letters two-feet high: “Viagra Here! Now!”

My two weeks along Florida’s southwest coast were spent in wildlife refuges and sanctuaries dotted among vast housing tracts. I photographed numerous wading birds, such as ibis, egrets, herons, and Roseate Spoonbills, and their varied feeding strategies and behaviors. Ospreys, kites, eagles, vultures and hawks of all kinds dipped and soared over the marshes. Alligators sunned or swam in almost every waterway. Some were enormous, maybe 12-feet-long, others just inches long. Other than raccoons I saw few mammals. I had no real expectation of seeing the endangered Florida Panther, a type of cougar, but I kept looking. One day I hiked an overgrown trail atop an old roadway trying to find an osprey nest I’d been told about. It was hot and buggy and I swiped constantly at the bug repellent-laden sweat burning my eyes. Suddenly I stopped rock still. I felt eyes on me. Something was watching. Grizzly! was my reflexive thought. At once I rejected the absurdity, then thought of a panther. I looked slowly in all directions, saw nothing. I made another sweep – still nothing. A slight movement at my feet caught my attention. A snake. As big around as my wrist, and just two feet away. I stopped breathing, hearing, feeling. The impulse was to jump back but I held still. Then more movement a little to the right – another snake! Very cautiously I looked to my right and left and behind me, then very slowly I took a large step backward. The two snakes, which I imagined to be deadly poisonous, never moved. I took another step back. Without shame, I turned around and hurried away.

Despite layers and layers of atomic-powered sunblock, I still fried to a crisp. To keep the sun off my bald, burned head, I wore a cap emblazoned “Fairbanks, Alaska.” Several people asked me if I was really from Alaska, or had just vacationed there. The next question was invariably, “Is it as cold there as they say it is?” One person actually shuddered when I said “minus 30,” and said, “How do you people live like that?”

My last day in Florida was spent wading around a swamp in a fruitless search for a certain kind of frog. It was hot, humid, and buggy. Traffic that night was terrible – it took almost two hours to get back to my motel. I itched from sunburn, mosquito bites, and poison ivy. When I finally carried my pack into my motel room, I found that the maid had shut off the air-conditioning. It seemed hotter inside than out. I tore off my sweat-soaked clothes and threw them in a corner. I turned on the air-conditioner and set it at “Arctic.” Itching and scratching I stood in the blessed cool air and said out loud, “How do you people live like this?”