Swamp

Happy National Alligator Day to all who celebrate! On this day, I am thinking of my great-great-grandfather Alexander Bentley, (pictured above, on the left). Alexander was a bonafide alligator hunter back in the 1800s, navigating the St. Johns River and the creeks around our hometown of Green Cove Springs, Florida. There are a lot of wild and unusual critters roaming/swimming/boating/4-wheeling in the state of Florida: iguanas, a multitude of snake species, manatees, flamingos, Florida Men. And Florida is the home of over a million alligators currently. Florida is definitely where the wild things are.

And that brings me to “Where the Wild Things Are,” the beloved children’s book by Maurice Sendak. In 1962, a year before “Where the Wild Things Are” came out, Sendak published “Alligators All Around: An Alphabet.” It was in a boxed set of four miniature books entitled “Nutshell Library.” I am a fan of children’s books generally, and I like the format of this small alphabet book. Sendak creates an alliterative phrase on each page, offering us vignettes from the everyday life of an alligator family (riding reindeer, juggling jellybeans, and so on).

There are also a few glimpses of the characters and scenes that show up in “Where the Wild Things Are.” The child on the “P” page favors our friend Max in “Wild Things.” The little gator on the “T” page looks like a rehearsal sketch for the famous wild rumpus of Max and his friends.

I plan to celebrate National Alligator Day this year by reading “Alligators All Around” with my four year old granddaughter. And I will tell her how we are both descended from a real-life dragon slayer.

The Okefenokee Swamp covers almost a half-million acres in south Georgia, spilling over the state line into north Florida. It is a vast and imposing wilderness, and has been a protected National Wildlife Refuge since 1937. Before that, it was also home to Swampers, Crackers, people who were social outliers. My ancestors. The Chesser Island Homestead is a preserved 19th-century Cracker structure hidden deep within the Swamp, open to the public, where visitors can experience what life for Swamp pioneers might have been like. When the Okefenokee became federally protected property, the residents within the Swamp were forced to leave, relocating to nearby towns, deserting the life and livelihood they had known for generations. Some of the Chessers traveled into northern Florida, where I was born, creating my ancestral line back to the Swamp. I did not visit the Okefenokee Swamp nor Chesser Island until I was well into my adult years, but I have come to love and appreciate its beauty, its serenity, and the sense of primeval wisdom that I feel whenever I am there. Connecting back to an actual ancestral home in a primitive place became an important touchstone as I wrote my memoir. These were not people of means or any type of societal stature. But they were resilient and resourceful, much like pioneers who settled in other frontiers of our country: the Appalachian mountains, the far West. I am proud for their blood to run through my veins. I am proud that a Swamp runs through my memoir.

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Cracker Gothic

Thoughts from a Southern writer with roots in the sand of weird Florida.

Happy National Alligator Day

A Swamp Runs Through My Memoir