Connecting People and Places by Franklin Adams
AN UNFORGETTABLE DARK SKY NIGHT AT THE BEARS DEN CAMP IN THE BIG CYPRESS SWAMP
I
t was the spring night of March 13, 1989, and Karl Greer and I were enjoying sitting by the campfire sipping some bourbon and listening to the Barred owls calling. As the lightered pine fire died down, we decided to go in and cook our supper of venison backstrap, pole beans fresh from Homestead and corn shuffle. It was a cool dark peaceful night and we were thankful to be out of town and in the wilderness woods of Big Cypress. After a delicious supper we continued to talk about the good old days and finished off with some homemade Key lime pie. I set up the coffee pot for the next morning and decided to stoke the campfire and relax a while before hitting the sack. A whippoorwill began to call nearby. I hoped to hear an Osceola gobble at first light. Walking out into the hammock edge I looked to the north and suddenly it looked like the entire Big Cypress Preserve north of Alligator Alley was on fire. Karl and I were amazed at the height of the
distant fire. (We both had seen many wild and prescribed fires over the years in the cypress country.) As we watched intently the distant fire seemed to waver and move and reach into the heavens, not something we had seen before. I jokingly said, it’s probably just the Northern Lights, the Aurora borealis. It was an incredibly impressive display in that dark night sky. When I returned home four days later, I mentioned our experience to my wife Kathy. She smiled and walked over to the newspapers that she had saved for me and held up the headline page. A rare sighting of the Aurora borealis seen in South Florida for the first time in many years. Many nights in Big Cypress it almost seems that you could reach up and touch the Milky Way, it is so clear in that dark sky. Karl and I were so fortunate to have experienced this totally unexpected viewing of the Aurora. Most likely, a once in a lifetime opportunity for us in the wilds of Big Cypress.
In 2016 the Big Cypress National Preserve was designated an “International Dark Sky Place” by the International Dark Sky Association. Footprint
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