While we pack for an overnight canoe trip on Fisheating Creek, 21-year-old JT Graves hits 14-year-old Read Wolfe with, “Hey junior, leave your exfoliating lotion and your hair gel.” The crack dawns on Read slowly, but then Read, who I doubt even brought a toothbrush, tells JT that he’ll have a hard time keeping his legs closed in a canoe while wearing a mini-skirt. JT crushes him in a headlock, and says something about seeing who the sissy will be after he catches the trip’s biggest bass. Although I’m supposed to play the responsible leader, it’s never been one of my strongest roles and I can’t help but laugh. The furthest thing from sissies, these two young anglers will make a great crew, and I want them to catch big bass—lots of them. But ultimately, I want these sons of family friends to appreciate one of Florida’s last intact stretches of wilderness, and their right to access it.

Read Wolfe learns to fly cast in time with nature's metronome.

Each spring, but many moons ago, my parents ritually brought my sister and me to the waterway the Seminoles named Thlothlopopka-Hatchee, or “the creek where fish are eaten.” For both the Seminoles and their predecessors, the ancient native “Belle Glade people,” the creek was more than a source of food and water; it also served as a canoe highway leading to and from Lake Okeechobee. Of course, Fisheating Creek was mainly for us a recreational resource, but as we watched the concrete jungle sprawl westward across Palm Beach County, we came to understand the lake’s only undammed tributary as a wild thoroughfare between pre-settled Florida and a future where Floridians would still enjoy opportunities to experience wilderness and to learn wilderness skills. Although at that age my sister and I couldn’t realize it, our paddles and rods connected us to this wilderness, and made us part of its natural history. Then, abruptly, the opportunity to make such connections on Fisheating Creek was gone.

Back in 1989, Lykes Brothers, the land baron that owns most of the land surrounding the creek, folded their campground and canoe-livery service and cut off all access. Their actions caused uproar within the Glades community, and a 10-year-long legal battle ensued. Ultimately, Fisheating Creek was declared a navigable waterway and the right to public access was guaranteed into perpetuity. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) now manages the creek’s riparian boundaries, as well as the 40,000-acre Fisheating Creek Wildlife Management Area, a property the state purchased from Lykes Brothers at the end of the legal battle. The Palmdale campground, which has recently been given a thorough makeover, is run for FWC by a concessionaire, and the concession offers primitive campsites, RV hookups and a canoe livery service.

Creek levels between two and three feet make for the best combination of fishing and canoeing conditions. At those levels, you rarely have to get out of the canoe, but the creek is still shallow enough that the fish gang up in the deep holes in the creek bends. But in April, we find that Fisheating Creek is extremely low—less than two feet. So, when we arrive at the campground, Bob Joyner, the new concessionaire, explains that only the creek’s widest reaches hold enough water to make for reasonable paddling and fishing. We are their only reservation, so Bob suggests we camp near the Burnt Bridge access, and explore that oxbow and as much of the creek as the low water allows.

In the spring, larger bass migrate up Fisheating Creek from Lake Okeechobee.

The Burnt Bridge access road brings us lakeside beneath a canopy of spring-verdant cypress. The view is so breathtaking that Read and JT forget their fish lust and gaze across the shimmering oxbow where dozens of enormous alligators reflect the glare metallically. Read is duly impressed by the sizes of these lizards.

“Dude, that one’s longer than the canoe,” he says, pointing, so I playfully shove the skinny kid into ankle-deep water. He scrambles back up the bank. Then, a shadow passes over us so big it could belong to a pterodactyl. I recognize the whistle of a swallowtail kite and point out its scissor-tail to them.

“Those birds helped save this creek,” I tell them. “One of the world’s largest migrations of that species stops here to fatten up before flying down to South America. The state bought all that land along the creek in part to protect their habitat.”