Word: stilts
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...disliked the nickname "the Stilt," but he embraced the name "Dipper," which became "Big Dipper." He called his boat and his house Ursa Major. "It has a certain beauty and power and grace and majesty," he wrote. "And it represents something real, enduring, eternal. It's not just a nursery-rhyme reference to my height or some inanimate object." He added, "It's bigger than life itself," not indicating how hard that was to bear...
That dream is as much a part of Florida as stone crabs and retirement condos. Which is why this summer even landlubbers are rushing to defend scores of stilt houses across the state, from Biscayne Bay to the Everglades and the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists want the state and federal governments to raze the structures, many of which are on public land, because they regard them as a messy human intrusion on Florida's delicate ecosystem...
...boosters insist the long-legged dwellings are a romantic reminder of how people and nature once harmoniously co-existed in Florida. "My son is studying to be a biologist because of the love for wildlife he nurtured out here," says J.R. Hinsley, a plant-nursery owner whose stilt house--a furnished, air-conditioned "hunt camp" he calls the Fontainebleau--sits above alligator nests deep in the Everglades, southwest of Boca Raton, accessible only by airboat. "People can call us swamp rats and rednecks all they want," says Hinsley's neighbor Don Kirk, 59, "but folks are supporting us because most...
Some "swamp rats," of course, have been known to treat the Everglades like a trailer park. But most, like Hinsley and Kirk, say they just want to preserve Florida's version of outback cowboy life--and a rare piece of history. Since the pre-Columbian era, the stilt house has been as much a part of the Caribbean waterscape as the windmill in Holland. Venezuela got its name when conquistadors marveled at the Indians' stilt huts and dubbed it "Little Venice." The Spanish dotted the Florida coasts with stilt houses, often built from wrecked galleons...
This summer Governor Jeb Bush cited stilt houses as historic landmarks and helped renew the 20-year, submerged-land leases for existing houses on state property. That, however, does not cover the 25-year leases for Stiltsville, which is in Biscayne National Park. Their expiration this year fired up the federal wrecking ball--and local protesters, who rallied to save the site. Carl Hiaasen, who has used Stiltsville as a setting in his novels, argues that the houses can be lifesavers. He and his son, he wrote in the Miami Herald, once survived a violent storm by tying their boat...