Picayune Strand
A large patch of swamp land with a checkered past... Scooped up by the feds from the inhabiting ranchers for wetland conservation and sold to a development firm. The Gulf American Land Corp. cleared out large blocks of heavy jungly forest and laid paved roads to accommodate the 30,000 planned lots over the 60,000 acre area creating the largest sub-division in America, Golden Gate Estates. The canals that were cut to drain the swamp land were inadequate and failed to keep the wetland habitable year round. The project proved a failure but the lots continued to be sold never to be actually fully developed associating "selling swampland" with "selling the Brooklyn Bridge." In the years later the paved roads we used by drug smugglers as landing strips and also made for a good place to make body disappear. In 85' the Save Our Everglades conservation program put up $25mil to purchase close to 17,000 of the nefariously sold lots back from the dupped snowbirds, creating the Picayune Strand State Forest
I took a turn off a dirt path that ran through a wildlife preserve I was driving through. I crept through a few miles of trail that was less than friendly to a Toyota Corolla. The trail opened up to paved roads complete with road signs canals and bridges in the middle of no where, a little surreal when you don't know the information mentioned above.
Shot with a heavy red filter and Stand developed in a 1+9 dilution of Ilford ddx; agitation for the first minute then left to sit for 45min.
Canon A2e, 24 & 50mm, Ilford Hp5 @ 1600
