07/30/2026
Few Florida stories capture our changing relationship with nature like the tale of the Kissimmee River. 🌊 For thousands of years it wandered in lazy curves across a wide floodplain, a hundred mile ribbon of water feeding vast marshes on its way toward Lake Okeechobee.
Then in the 1960s, engineers straightened it into a deep, arrow like canal to control flooding, shrinking the meandering river to a rigid ditch. The wetlands dried, the wading birds vanished, and the water quality declined. It was a hard lesson in what is lost when we try to outsmart a living landscape. In the decades since, one of the largest river restoration projects in the world has been putting the curves back, refilling old channels and reviving the marsh. 🐦
Today herons and snail kites are returning to a river learning to be wild again. The Kissimmee is proof that with humility and effort, some mistakes can be undone.
Do you find hope in seeing a damaged landscape brought back to life like this? 🌱
