The Deep Hole

Far off at the wild south end of this park, beyond where the roads go, there's a place that draws the brave and the curious from all over — a place called, simply, the Deep Hole. And what happens there each winter is one of the most jaw-dropping wildlife sights in all of Florida. Let me tell you about it, though I'll tell you plain, it's not a place we're driving to today.

The Deep Hole is a sinkhole — a great circular pit in the bed of the Lower Myakka Lake, where the limestone under Florida collapsed and left a hole in the earth some three hundred feet across and, they say, a hundred and thirty feet deep. And here's what makes it a wonder: in the dry season, when the rest of the shallow lake shrinks away, that deep hole stays full of water and full of fish — and the alligators know it. They come to it. By the dozens, and then by the hundreds. Picture it: a single sandbar and shoreline absolutely carpeted with alligators, hundreds of them, big ones, piled up cheek by jowl, sunning and sliding and waiting, drawn to the last deep water and the trapped fish. It is a primeval sight, like something out of the age of dinosaurs — one of the greatest concentrations of wild alligators you can find anywhere on the planet.

Now, reaching it is no easy stroll, and that's on purpose. It sits deep in the park's wilderness preserve, and to protect that wild place, they let only a small number of people hike out to it each day — you've got to get a free permit at the ranger station, and they cap it, first-come, first-served. And it's a long, hot, buggy hike of a few miles out and a few miles back, through country where those very alligators roam free and unfenced, so it's for the fit and the careful and the well-prepared only. But for those who make it — hundreds of wild gators gathered at the edge of a bottomless hole in the earth. Something to know is out there, at the wild far end of this park, whether you go or not. This is that kind of place. Roll on.