Night Magic

Over the years, I’ve paddled through most of the coastal waterways in Sarasota County, spending memorable days exploring their wild splendor and natural history. But last summer, I began a grand new adventure on our bays—kayaking at night. Several times a week, I’d head out around sunset and launch my small wooden canoe, which I built myself and which functions like a kayak, into the warm bay waters. I’d usually stay out until well after dark, discovering a nighttime world of magical sights and sounds.

 My boat is not equipped with a light, although I bring along a flashlight. But on most nights, the afterglow from the sunset and then the light of the moon and stars provide plenty of illumination. I’m also careful about safety procedures—I always bring along a floatation device and an emergency paddle, and I check the weather and stay home if a storm is predicted. Although I keep an eye out for other watercraft, I rarely encounter other kayakers or motorboats—except on Friday nights or when the moon is full. 

ight or day, I love exploring Lemon Bay and the super-shallow waters of the Jim Neville Preserve in Little Sarasota Bay. But my favorite place to launch for sunset-watching is the mainland side of Blackburn Bay. Named for the Blackburn family who arrived in the 1870s, this is one of the most beautiful bays in the county. If it’s calm, the water is clear enough to reveal the luscious sea grass meadows alive with crabs, mollusks and fish. As the angle of the sun declines, the glare is reduced, and underwater visibility is greatly enhanced. Wading birds of several sizes and colors serve as tidal measuring devices, revealing the depth of every salt flat, sandbar or oyster bed.

These estuaries, where freshwater meets the salt, are the foundation of our marine food chain. Leaves from the salt-tolerant mangrove trees fall to the bay bottom and enrich the verdant sea grass beds. The sea grass and the mangroves work together to nourish the life of the bay. The deteriorating sea grass blades and mangrove leaves are consumed by a host of small marine organisms, which in turn nourish larger crabs and fish.

On most evenings, fish of all sizes dart and jump around me, some of them drumming up against the boat’s hull. Even after dark, I can hear the mullet practicing their airborne leaps and splashing back into the bay. Every now and then a dolphin breaks the surface nearby; sometimes several of them circle around, splashing the water as they hunt for fish.

After the sun drifts below the horizon and the night sky turns to fire and gold, some of my favorite birds come out to play and dine. Night herons creep along the mangrove edge, looking for a fiddler crab or some other seafood treat. A roseate spoonbill perches on a secluded mangrove limb, settling down for the night. A reddish egret “dances up” a meal as it quickly shuffles the shallow flats and shakes its wings to spook the shiners it is hunting. Bright white egrets fishing on the flats glow like lanterns as the day gives way to night.

At night the bay appears more expansive, and as the details are obscured by the distance and the darkness, I begin to feel I’ve traveled back in time. Waterfront homes and docks disappear, and sky, water and wild creatures define my world.

Sometimes I just stop and listen and appreciate that I have left the noise of civilization behind. The sounds that surround me now create an organic rhythm—the rushing of the waves on the nearby Gulf beach, the buzzing whine of cicadas in the mangroves. The waves have a constant slow and steady beat, and the cicadas produce a temperature-determined, variable-pitch melody. These natural rhythms and melodies, accompanied by vocals like the territorial squawk of a blue heron or the insistent call of a whippoorwill, are the music of the bay. I have a new understanding of those old myths about “singing rivers.”

From time to time I hear the whoosh of the wings of ibis as they fly in formation against the darkening sky. Flock after flock flies overhead, sometimes so low that it seems like you can feel the force of the wind from their wings.