We can’t get the state to do anything about it either.’’ What the state of
Florida did accomplish was (in Fishman’s words) to ‘‘run a spray program
to control the plant. The plant dies, rots, and sinks to the bottom, leaving
the surface water clear and the bottom deep in ooze.’’
Ooze is, indeed, broadly evocative of Fishman’s Florida. For all the mo-
ments of pleasure she gathered in her visitations with historical places, the
present mostly disgusted. In her Audubon chapter she complained defen-
sively: ‘‘I could not bring myself to follow John James to the Keys. It has
been about thirty-five years since the last visit and I do not want to dis-
turb or replace the memories of quiet beaches, beautiful water, and real
Key lime pie made by someone who knew how.’’ Much later, following John
Kunkel Small farther and farther southward, Fishman grew despondent:
‘‘I cannot honestly think of another region that has been so transformed
and obliterated as South Florida,’’ she wrote. ‘‘The places John Small loved
were long gone before I arrived and even the Miami I loved as a child will
never be seen again.’’ Then, chillingly, she added, ‘‘These days, traveling
much farther south than Gainesville in my home state leaves me drained,
disappointed, frustrated, saddened, distraught—any emotion but happy.’’
She might resist Audubon in the Keys, but following Small was essential
to her self-assigned mission. Grimly, then, Fishman ‘‘face[d] that tropical
journey one more time.’’
tComparable lamentation is chanted in other voices, too, with attach-
ment to other subregions of the American South. Not just Fishman’s Florida
but virtually every inch of the rest of the coastal South is for sale or already
developed. Tidal marshes and swamps, estuaries, coastal forests, and enor-
mous drainage systems are compromised or obliterated. Building becomes
as dense in some southern places as on the French and Italian rivieras, and
auto traffic is arguably worse. My own version of Fishman’s despair attaches
to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, especially Nags Head and adjacent
communities of Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, which was the nearly barren
retreat of my youth from nearby metropolitan Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Worse than the traffic and clutter of buildings, perhaps, is the callous dis-
missal of a delicious indigenous cuisine in what must be a monumentally
stupid and unconfident appeal to perceived touristic appetites: New En-
gland clam chowder, New York steaks, and much pizza. Transformations of
landscape from un- or barely built to densely built must be accepted (lest
one go insane)—Fishman may disagree—but the compromising of local