In 1976, Lee County voters approved a bond referendum that provided the necessary funds to purchase and protect the land that became the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve. It’s an eleven mile long, narrow wetland with slowly flowing freshwater. These days it encompasses more than 3,500 acres of intermingled wetland and upland and features a 1.2 mile boardwalk that’s open to the public, as well as an Interpretive Center. You can learn more about its origin story here.
When author and educator Carole Burns’ father Frank passed away earlier this year she found a small, simple notebook amongst his things that he’d carried with him during his time as a volunteer at the slough, where he’d led tours since 2001. She wrote an essay about finding that notebook and sent it our way, so we thought it would be a good reason to have a conversation about what the slough meant to her father, and what finding that notebook meant to her — and what the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve has meant, and means, to so many of the people who’ve visited it over the past nearly half-century.
Follow this link to learn about volunteer opportunities at the preserve.
Guests:
Carole Burns, author of The Same Country, and associate professor of English at University of Southampton in the UK
Sabine Vandenhende, president of the Friends of the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve Board of Directors
David Minnick, volunteer at the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve and member of the board of the Friends of the Six Mile Cypress Slough Preserve
Carole's Essay
HOLE – FROG
STRANGLER FIG
LANCE LEAF ARROWHEAD
SAGITTARIA
These are a few memos in my father Frank Burns’s notebook, from his days as a volunteer at the Six Mile Cypress Preserve Slough in Fort Myers. I was delighted, and moved, to find this little notepad in his desk drawer a few weeks after he died this February at the fabulous age of 96.
With his all-caps handwriting, his bare-bones, “just the facts, ma’am” notes, the humble spiral-bound pad is hauntingly evocative of my father and the treasured times I spent walking the Slough with him. Just three inches wide and five inches long, the notebook retains the curve it must have developed from the hours it spent in his lapel pocket on the tours he led at the Slough – he had such a sharp memory, that I’m not sure I ever saw him take it out to check a fact.
My father began volunteering at the Slough in about 2001, when he and my mother, Dolores, first wintered in Florida at my sister Eileen’s nearby condo before he moved there in 2013. While my mother volunteered in the shop, Dad led hour-long guided tours at the Slough, and also volunteered as a “rover,” traversing the wooden planks of the 1.2 mile boardwalk to answer any questions from visitors walking through the Slough on their own.
When visiting from Wales, I’d accompany Dad on his tours as his “glamorous assistant.” How much I enjoyed seeing him in his element. Dad’s tours were consistently entertaining and informative, and leafing through his notebook reminds me of some of his favorite Slough facts: how the cypress “knees” enable the cypress trees to withstand hurricanes; how the frizzled-up resurrection fern re-flourishes like a phoenix at the first new rain.
When Dad gave up his tours because he worried he was too old, we still visited the Slough on every one of my trips. I was lucky enough to be there with my father the morning the bobcat raced up a tree and lingered on a branch, commanding an astonished audience of visitors for hours. On quieter days, we’ve seen roseate spoonbills; Big Al lounging on the sunny dock; otters (though not at the Otter Pond – “I’ve never seen otters at the Otter Pond,” my father liked to say); pileated woodpeckers; lime-yellow tree frogs; and dozens and dozens of ibises and anhingas and warblers and egrets. I was never fortunate enough to spot the yellow rat snake, but I heard about it every time we walked past his (her?) tree.
I wonder if coming to know the flora and fauna of the Six Mile Slough helped my Dad feel connected to his new home; it certainly helps me feel connected to him, even now, as I remember walking beside him through the wet-green, lush landscape of Southwest Florida.
Carole Burns, author of The Same Country, is a writer and associate professor of English in the UK.
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