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Sarasota News Leader December 21, 2012 In 1881, when Charles Torrey Simpson arrived in Bradenton, sea life was still ample enough to provide a ready feast for him and his friends when they sailed Sarasota Bay. And later, after he had settled near Miami, there were plenty of wild places for him to take weeklong treks with fellow scientists such as John Kunkel Small. ���I loved Florida on sight. It is dearer to me, today, than any place on earth,��� Simpson wrote in Florida Wild Life. Page 55 Simpson Park, a five-and-a-half-acre tract surrounded by skyscrapers, is about all that remains of Brickell Hammock.��� In the 1970s, Florida���s eminent naturalist, Archie Carr, observed, ���The history of Florida is a desperate sort of striving for growth and development ��� this has dimmed or destroyed much of the natural charm that originally drew people here��� ���an excerpt from Eden Changes in A Naturalist in Florida: A CeleBut he watched with dismay as Miami de- bration of Eden. voured the rockland hammocks he so trea- Other times I realize that the old Florida has sured. not quite disappeared. At T. Mabry Carlton ReWhen I drive to Miami, I pass through the vast serve in Venice, deer graze along the trails and in winter, flocks of robins settle into nighttime open spaces of the Everglades, which he and perches. others, such as Margery Stoneman Douglas, worked so hard to preserve, but I end up on I can always count on wildflowers.��� At sunset eight lanes of freeway running through a glass on a tiny spit of land at Mirror Lake in Saraand steel canyon. sota I have watched wave after wave of cor-