Steve Robinson – Remembered
Everglades National Park
Aboard our catamaran, 'Surprise', in Pamlico Sound over Thanksgiving we spied 'Windfall' in Silver Lake, Ocracoke, Outer Banks, NC. From her summer home out in the ocean she was ready to move south. Two days later, Windfall appeared leaving the Neuse River. She had a ‘bone in her teeth’- a big white bow wave on a high black hull with tan-bark colored main and foresail. Captain Rob Carpenter was taking his schooner south to Flamingo in Everglades National Park to give it maybe one more year of his career captaining sailing tours in Florida Bay. On a hunch, I called Windfall on the VHF as she tore by. “Do you run sailing trips in the Everglades and are you headed to Flamingo? By God we do know each other.. and how are Steve and Amelia?” A pause at the other end. Then, "Oh, Steve died last summer of pancreatic cancer. It was very sudden."
We had last seen Rob 20 years earlier when we had guided in the ‘Glades. We worked in the ‘Glades for ten years through the 1980’s guiding small groups on camping and canoeing week-long trips through our company, The Mountain Workshop. Once on an early March arrival at Flamingo, trailer and canoes in tow from Connecticut, we gassed up at the marina and there to help us was the snowcoach driver whom we had hired a month earlier in Yellowstone to show our clients “Yellowstone in Winter,” another of our winter offerings. An employee of TW Services, the same concessionaire used by both National Parks, this fellow had been transferred south to the Everglades as the winter season in Yellowstone was ending! We were part of a family in Flamingo.
Living on fish and apple juice, Steve Robinson was assigned by the National Park to guide the Secretary of Interior, Mo Udall, when he came for a visit.
We had first met Steve when he was narrating the Park's ecology on the 'Bald Eagle,'
a tour boat, in the late 70’s. Shortly thereafter we hired him for our annual late winter “Everglades Expeditions.” Adventures were extreme in the 'Glades. Travelling by canoe and three days out from civilization Sue and I would lead through the aptly named Alligator River with the ‘gators stacked like cordwood’ plunging off a three-foot bank into the river before you. You paddled shallow over the beasts 5 feet below... And with five loaded tandem canoes and 12 folks behind us!
So we’d meet Steve on the Flamingo breezeway to start Day 4 of our program week, our auto tour day with a Park Naturalist. With Steve’s help, all came to understand the relationship of eagle to osprey, and as Steve would say, a ‘bad hand’ was held by the osprey. As the only Park employee with a full beard and ponytail, “Callusa-man” would then jump into the shotgun seat and we’d head out in the 15-passenger van to Royal Palm Visitors Center. We’d see the snake bird, the soft-shell turtle with only nostrils above water, the heron throwing its fish into the air to catch it head first, the rifle-shot crack of a turtle shell being crushed by a gator. And here Steve talked of the tree snake that got caught in the strangler fig. On naturalist duty one day halfway out along the boardwalk, Steve watched this snake all day with one half of its body protruding ahead – looking out from the tree directly at you, not three feet away – and the tail seen behind the tree. He figured the snake had had himself a frog meal and it was gonna take him a few hours to digest. Next day the snake was gone.
We would stop at Pa-hay-okee, another roadside exhibit, where Steve’s famous “Everything” remark was mentioned. He would show us a picture of the south Florida canal system handsomely portrayed on its center stand with all the canals emanating like spokes in all directions from Lake Okeechobee. These canals now carried the water from the lake that historically would overflow the lake’s southern shore annually during the summer wet season, spread out into a sheet 60 miles wide, one foot deep and traveling one mile a day, the famous ‘River of Grass”. Though knowing the Park’s critical water loss and its devastating effect on the wildlife especially the birds better than most, he would talk of the water’s absence without malice or judgment, but rather with a quiet optimism as if to say things would get better. On the way back to the van, on those rare occasions when there was standing water, Steve showed us the inch long gambusia or mosquito fish hiding in the pitted limestone in the 6 inches of water alongside our boardwalk. This fish is the base of the Park’s food chain. Yes, he would say, they also wait for the water to return because then ‘everything’ can be as it was.
After Pa-hay-okee we would pull to the side of the road with nothing around. To all our sports’ disbelief we would roll up our pants and step off the pavement into the trackless sawgrass. Walking single file to avoid getting cut by the grass, we’d eventually arrive wet and muddy at a nearby cypress dome oftentimes to find the resident gator lounging at its center. As the winter “dry down” progresses, gators will stake out the few remaining “gator holes” to survive the drought. When asked, Steve figured to come back as an alligator for his opportunistic but relaxed approach. He also mentioned returning as a turkey vulture, saying why flap your wings when you don’t have to.
Of course we would have lunch on our road-trip day. As always, everyone’s day pack would be packed full. Steve would show up in the morning carrying his bottle of Apple Juice. We’d stop for lunch and out would come everyone’s food. I would hand Steve a sandwich. He would act surprised and touched and gobble it down. Of course the alligator is opportunistic but can always wait if nothing shows.
At trip’s end Steve would talk of his kinship with the Callusa, early Florida natives. Our guests would look at this strange dude in the front seat with his long ponytail and full beard who had taught them much that day. They had come to understand the deep knowledge and love Steve had for the place. They had seen his soft footfall, and his quick recognition of the creatures nearby. They had shared his quiet manner and learned of his simple ways. Perhaps they had come to see a Callusa themselves, had come to appreciate the timelessness of this man and had come to see his wisdom. On your next trip through the Everglades, stop at the bridge just south of Royal Palm. Get out and look under the bridge and say, “Just add water” and remember Steve Robinson.
