Cross Creek, Florida

Maxwell Perkins, the famous editor who suggested to Rawlings that she write a boy’s book similar to Treasure Island, was also the editor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Hemingway. Even though Rawlings died in 1953, I felt her presence in her house on the edge of Orange Lake. And in my new private friendship with her, I read almost every word she wrote, and especially every letter she and Perkins exchanged as he coached her through the writing of her famous novel.

In doing so, I gained some of the wisdom in that coaching and put it to use myself. I spent many hours reading on the back porch of that fish camp beside the creek that connects the two great lakes -- Orange and Lochloosa. I learned to name the birds that swoop there, to revere the gators that glide in the water like ancient canoes, and to know full well that encouraging them to lose their fear of me is more dangerous than dropping a match in a drought-dried forest.

There is something primeval in the landscape of Cross Creek. There is the smell of water and swamp, cypress trees and fish. Sitting on the back porch of that fish camp, I often felt I was in the midst of a chapter in Genesis. Marvelous was the variety of life my son pulled up on the end of his line: wiggling crappie, brim, garfish, and occasionally the largemouth bass for which Florida is famous.

Today, new approaches are working to preserve this love of place. Call it ecotourism, heritage vacations, or culinary field trips -- the terms don’t matter. The words add up to being united in trying to save Cross Creek for those who come in the future. The Heart of Florida Scenic Trail Guide points out ways to see it all.

And, oh yeah -- my son is now getting a Ph.D. in fish, fisheries biology it is properly called. And I am finishing up my seventh book, a novel about a boy fishing for the world’s largest bass on a lake named -- you guessed it -- Orange, at the mouth of Cross Creek.

Shelley Fraser Mickle has read her humorous essays on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and is the author of several novels, including The Queen of October; Replacing Dad; Barbaro: America’s Horse; and her latest novel, The Assigned Visit, set on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Visit  www.shelleymickle.com  for more information.