Mangroves | The Beachside Resident

By: Matt Badolato

Article Category: Matt Badolato Leave a Comment

Five a.m.

My cell phone alarm clock ring-a-ling-lings in my dark room and I slide sideways out of bed, right onto my feet. I do the whole morning thing — clothes on, coffee on, cereal in a bowl — but with zest and enthusiasm. Not a school morning.

I hop into my truck and get on the half-hour drive to my fishing spot. The dark, early morning drive is foggy and surreal and has me on a caffeine-induced thinking spree. Life has been weird lately. I graduated high school a few months ago and just started community college. Most of my good friends have moved away and are out chasing their dreams and following the big plans in their heads. Me, I’m still just fishing and surfing and not really going anywhere too fast. What are my big plans? Where will I end up? I shake out the answerless thoughts and turn on some boring NPR to drone out my anxiousness.

I pull up alongside the old Jamaican lady’s house. She lets me fish from her riverfront backyard in exchange for random intervals of housework. A few years back she caught me sneaking through her property with my fishing rod in hand and promised not to “make tha po-leece call” if I picked up all the dead palm fronds on her lot. When I was done, she flashed a full smile of yellow teeth and said to come back any time. To this day she is warm and welcoming, but if I come by to fish in the afternoon while she’s awake I’m beckoned to work.

One time it was roof patching. “Yuh gwan put a few ‘mo tacks ’round dem edges!” she shouted from the ground with her hands cupped over her mouth. “Dat hur’kin gone be mighty big dis time!” Great, this woman’s life depends on my handiwork, I thought, as I hammered fluorescent pink tacks and laid roof-patch paper over a decrepit cluster of gritty grey shingles.

But today is different. No handyman work, no school, no worries. Nothing but a quiet morning of fishing in the river. I step outside my truck and breathe in the thick, humid summer morning. I throw on my wading boots and walk quietly through the yard, fishing rod over my shoulder.

In the dim dawn, I make out the hole through the mangroves leading to the water. With my rod held out horizontally, careful not to smack the branches above, I punch through the tangled roots and stalks. Clearing the groves, the river is a sheet of glass, slick as oil. Everything is quiet. Dead quiet. Yet I can feel the air and water absolutely brimming with life. Suddenly, a blurry arrow of blue and grey shoots out of the mangroves just a few feet away.

“Wraaaaakk! Wraaak! Wrak!” A blue heron, startled by my emergence, curses his intruder and pumps his wings, trying his hardest to get flying. My heart pounds on my ribs, reverberating in my ears. After a few seconds, the lanky heron finally catches the air and glides to another hangout a ways down the mangrove shoreline.

Regaining clarity and stillness, I walk out toward the sea grass bed. I can hardly see my feet through the tannin-stained water. A light fog erases the river’s western shoreline, creating the illusion of an endless sea in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye I catch a mullet shooting out of the water like a streamlined blimp, his body leaning to one side mid-air and landing on his side with a slap. I see a school of smaller mullet flipping around on the surface, their nervous, huddled bodies rippling the smooth water. Time to stop daydreaming and start fishing.

I cast out a big plug, a spook. The heavy, hollow plug flies through the air like a missile and lands with a plop. I watch the plug as I work it in, making it zigzag across the surface like a frantic dog on a leash. As I’m watching it cut through the glassy water, a small explosion blows up behind the plug. A fish, probably a trout, shot up to attack the plug but missed the two hooks dangling from it. I slow down my retrieve on the next cast, and after a few cranks on my reel, a fish rockets out of the water like a breaching submarine and charges the lure. This time I let the fish take the plug down with him, and as the line tightens up, I draw the rod back and it bends toward the fish.

After trying to shake the hooks, the fish figures “there’s definitely something wrong here” and takes off on a run across the flat. It’s bigger than I gave it credit for at first, so I hang on while it speeds away, the shiny spool on my reel spinning as line is peeled off. After a couple of minutes of tug-of-war the fish is swimming beside me. I pick up the solid bullet-shaped redfish, shining in her shimmering, golden-red scales like a suit of pennies. With one hand on her belly, I quickly pop the hook out from the corner of her mouth and slip her back into the dark, tannin-stained water.

I wipe my hands dry on my shirt and start casting around aimlessly. The sun is coming up behind the mangroves so I retreat back under the shadow their branches cast over the water. A stingray wiggles out from under my boot and I jump up like a shocked monkey, but he’s scared senseless and just scoots away, sparing me his tail spike.

After the short ordeal, I slow down my walk through the knee-deep water, getting a better look at all the life buzzing around me. Overhead, an osprey is circling with his head down, big black eyes scanning the water for a fish to dive-bomb. A needlefish darts in and out of a school of tiny, inch-long glass minnows, drawing the little fish into a tighter and tighter ball. In the clear, shallow water a blue crab scuttles beneath a flat, barnacle-encrusted rock.

I notice a few pencil-sized mangrove seeds bobbing in the living soup around me and instinctively glance over at the green and yellow mangroves. In front of me, the leaves on the tallest mangrove trees are covered in blinding white bird poop, a sight a friend of mine calls “Florida snow.” Snow-covered or not, I think, these are cool looking trees.

I suddenly start thinking about how lucky I am to be here on the calm river, with fish and birds all around me, and my feet planted in soft sand and warm water. What if I was a crab living under a dark rock? Or a little fish swimming for my life all day? Damn, I’m lucky. And to think that on the drive here a couple of hours ago I was worried about things which now seem so trivial. Then it hits me. I’m just like these mangrove seeds, floating around trying to make it to land, the currents constantly changing my course. But eventually I know I’ll end up on the shore, taking root and reaching my branches toward the sky.

It’s getting hot so I start to wade back. I pull down the brim of my hat and watch small fish dart into patches of weed as I walk. Trudging up into the old woman’s yard in my soggy boots, I notice her standing on her porch, watering a tall, skinny plant. I prepare to receive my chores as she cups her hands around her mouth and hollers.

“Hey chile, ya catch me any feesh?”

“Only one redfish, but I let her go!” I shout back.

“Ah, oh well,” she laughs in her raspy Jamaican patois. “At least ya did’n get stuck by none a dem sting-a-rees!”