miami’s forgotten nature
by Anthony David Vernon
Tourists come to Miami for the clubbing, the beaches, and the Latin music, making Miami the party capital of America. This is how the outside world perceives Miami, but even amongst fellow Miami natives, Miami’s natural beauty is forgotten. Miami’s nature gets overlooked for its mirrored skyscrapers, countless malls, and general buzz. Amongst all of Miami’s bustle, it would seem impossible to find a place of natural peace in South Florida, but contrary to that potential belief, Miami is perhaps one of the most natural cities in the United States.
When I speak of Miami, it is best to think of Miami not as the city of Miami but as Miami-Dade County, or the Miami metro area. The county, itself, is home to two national parks, the famous Everglades and the often-forgotten ocean-based Biscayne National Park. Life in Miami can be one of outdoor adventure through these two national parks alone: the Everglades has challenging muddy hikes, plenty of airboat-able waters, tons of wildlife (unfortunately tons of it being invasive), and even an ocean view at its tip. Meanwhile, Biscayne national park is an incredible place to paddleboard (especially from the Deering Point launch site) where one can see sea turtles, manatees, sharks, and coral reefs. These national parks are both wonderful places to journal about or from.
December 2nd, 2024 (Everglades National Park, Flamingo Beach): . Ghost trees, gators, and green grasses act as hosts to a wide river. The Everglades is an exit, a slow race to the sea, the type of host that invites you to leave. Yet, on a day when the host does not bug you, you’d wish to stay. But if you follow the drift past the ponds and lakes, you’ll reach the muddy sea to see mounds of mangroves and only small touches of man. What more should I say about a place that speaks for itself? Whose lips have been split by silencing roads?
September 30th, 2024 (Biscayne National Park, Dante Fascell): . . . .. Sometimes, it is best to create distance between ourselves and familiarity. And sometimes, this distance is not a matter of proximity but of tendency. It is easy to go to the same places, but one can only learn about their home fully from a distance. The bayside skyscrapers look more surreal in the distance.
So, if you usually head north, go south! Each part of your hometown is a part of your home. The borders are abstractions and conceptions; the ocean knows no nation. Distance can be near and not just in terms of the distance of the near. Instead, distance is often an outlook, as opposed to a strict measurement. Distance is a perspective of a horizon, perhaps seen before, but certainly that can be seen anew. What is left for us always is our phenomenology over many distances.
Yet, we need not limit Miami’s nature to its national parks. Kendall Indian Hammocks is a fantastic micro woodland. The canal system of C-100 is perhaps one of the most vibrant suburban ecosystems in the United States. Bill Baggs is an enviable state park. City life is not just about the city proper but also a city’s nature, this is obvious but also obviously forgotten. I swear I am not being paid by Miami-Dade County’s tourist development council; this is written to convince anyone to stop the party. But if you come to Miami, don’t miss out on seeing our nature, and maybe work on your journaling.
But then again, should we be capturing nature in any capacity, let alone for our own purposes? Cities have already captured man, what right does Miami, or any other city, have over nature? The grey urbanists have a point: should we not distance ourselves from nature, so we do not keep encroaching upon it? Every suburb built in Homestead is a failed affordable skyscraper that preserves scraps of the Everglades. The pockets of Miami’s nature the county and the federal government have kept preserved have been used to justify great expansion into the Everglades. Nature weaponized against nature.
December 10th, 2024 (Robert is Here, Homestead) . It is pretty easy for mankind to capture animals. Why not hoard together emus, goats, quails, and tortoises in one pen, while keeping a mass of parrots and toucans caged together? Why scour through nature in the hopes of finding an organism when the work has been done for you here? Here, we can see ourselves as shapers and shifters of nature, bringing animals to places where they otherwise could not be. Nature is to our conforming not only by definition but by physiology. Mankind even shapes the genetics of nature and has turned all of nature into one jointly encaptured ecosystem.
The landscapes that Miami highlights leaves other natural locales invisible and out-of-mind. The truly forgotten nature of Miami is not those named parks but the more obscure places that could be readily torn down by Lennar due to their invisibility, their forgottenness, and their namelessness; these are the heart of Miami’s wildlife and nature in general. But the tourists aren’t going to protect the wonder of these hidden spaces; there are Better Days ahead. No, it is up to the locals to take up the cause, but they are too busy forgetting the trees for the next "hot" place to be. As long as Miami is perceived as being one big club, its untouched beauty will be clubbed out in favor of one more suburb, one more bar, and one more unaffordable skyscraper that stands in the way of grey urbanism. Miami, today, is one of the most natural cities in the United States, but will that always be the case? Only time will tell.
Photo of Anthony David Vernon
BIO: Anthony David Vernon is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Miami-Dade College & St. Thomas University. When he is not engaging in philosophy he is enjoying Miami's nature via paddle boarding and trail walking.