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Best Months for
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They have never touched a cow, seen a pig or fed a chicken. What an illustration of just how divorced we have become from the natural world around us.
Indeed, all of us tend to be dominated by man-made artificial time, a world in which clocks and calendars determine out schedules even as they obscure the deeper rhythms of days and seasons. It a wonderful thing to rediscover these more fundamental cycles, to enter and observe a world not dictated by wristwatches but by such things as temperature and the length of the day.
In Florida , nature reveals herself throughout the year in an astonishing variety of guises, all delicately in time with the seasons. At Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, hundreds of endangered manatees congregate in the clear spring waters every winter to escape the potentially deadly cold ocean temperatures. At Canaveral National Seashore and all along the Florida east coast, the world's largest nesting population of loggerhead turtles crawl ashore from May to August to dig their nests and lay their eggs in the sand above the high waterline. At Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, hundreds of alligators may fast for as much as six months out of the year, their cold-blooded metabolism virtually dormant during the coldest months. At St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, thousands of monarch butterflies gather every October as they pause on their marathon journey to overwinter in the high forests outside of Mexico City. And every spring in Everglades National Park, thousands of herons, ibis and egrets cluster on the mangrove trees to create one of the most spectacular nesting sights anywhere: trees covered by the white feathers of so many birds it seems the trees are draped in down.
The real world unfolds in its own time. To appreciate nature, one must understand--and respect--its pace.
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