TY - JOUR
AU - Benz, Stephen
AB - STEPHE N BENZ Larboard, two verdant mounds—the Osprey Keys—swell from the sea, round and gleaming like two jade stones set in silver. Starboard, and nearer, Bradley Key clutches at the water with its perimeter mangroves. This morning, the tangled growth of Bradley gives sanctuary to a tricol- ored heron, two nesting great egrets, a flock of ibis, and an anhinga, its wings outspread over the tannin-stained water. Straight ahead, beyond the prow of the canoe, the placid waters of Florida Bay stretch to the Gulf of Mexico, unbroken except by the distant jutting line of East Cape Sable, the very southern edge of the mainland, inert on the horizon. We are paddling into the blinding light of a mid-summer morning on the bay—tough and tedious work against both tide and wind—in pursuit of a skiff that once drifted across these waters, some ninety years before us. To us—city dwellers—it's a spectacular morning, the air serene and pure, a freshness to everything despite the intensity of the sun, the relentless heat. Untrained, we don't notice the poisons leak- ing into these waters. We can't see the increased salinity destroying the habitat of the bay, the mercury run-off killing fisheries. For 
TI - Savior of the Snowy Egrets
JF - ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
DO - 10.1093/isle/7.2.225
DA - 2000-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/savior-of-the-snowy-egrets-nNzlbYRsZr
SP - 225
EP - 234
VL - 7
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -