Exceptionally close-up views of wildlife will prevail this winter and spring because of the heavy rains of last fall, turning the newly more accessible marsh of the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes into displays of color and motion rarely experienced so fully.

Even so, the Kissimmee chain includes only a few of the more than half-thousand lakes that sparkle across Polk County. Aquatic recreation ranges from bamboo pole fishing to airboating. Visitors can arrange photo-shoot cruising and rent everything from paddles to boats.

Pleasures of the lakes extend everywhere.

Bed-and-breakfasts overlook prize shorefront gardens.

Beside lakeshore restaurants, turtles clamber onto floating logs that might sink from their weight, causing them to circle round and climb more than once again.
Aside from relaxing in a riverbank hammock, most rewarding for laid-back visitors would be touring the 16 lakes in the Winter Haven Chain of Lakes by pontoon boat.

At Historic Bok Sanctuary in Lake Wales, a one-way glass blind lets visitors contemplate a pond teeming with un-spooked wildlife this winter.

For the most part, this world remains ungilded, a Florida that, once encountered, remains like a code accessible for recalling quiet across months back home, and maybe years.

Aside from relaxing in a riverbank hammock, most rewarding for laid-back visitors would be touring the 16 lakes in the Winter Haven Chain of Lakes by pontoon boat. You'll tour the shores of seven or eight lakes, including a view from the water at Cypress Gardens Adventure Park on Lake Eloise, the chain's largest.

Mansions mix with more modest homes. Together, they play out an architectural history of central Florida that includes packing houses that, even if no longer in use, remain from when citrus was king.

Bridges in these seasons of high water might oblige you to duck where roads and rail cross the canals that link the lakes. Yards with fruit trees line some of these narrow waterways. A chat's possible with a gardening householder as the pontoon boat idles through wake-free zones.

Wilderness abuts some canals. So do spring training fields of the Cleveland Indians and restaurants with tables at canopied decks.

One decorative bridge at Cypress Gardens arcs prettily from "Cadillac Island," a landmark from when car ads were photographed here for decades.

When the edge of a rare winter cloud drifts by, you might feel like one of those cabbages misted in a supermarket produce bin, a notion congenial in Polk County, which is home to the giant Publix chain.

But it's back in the long fetch of the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes that vast Florida captures your spirit as once it did the rapture of pioneers. Except that you perceive an endless realm of nature now preserved, so different from the perception of settlers 150 years ago who saw all newly beckoning central Florida as cattle range and citrus groves in the waiting.

The way to tour this wilderness of river and lakes is by airboat, which skims the surface in only fleeting disturbance.

The propeller-driven boats cut through the marsh every which way, comparable to how a propeller-driven plane might randomly carve the low sky. Few rules govern the way in high water.

At the edge of channels, white ibis and herons fall upon their wilderness roosts like the snow scenes of paperweights turned upside down. Sandhill cranes lift themselves slowly aloft like un-tethered kites. Everything familiar and unknown seems closer up in these seasons of high water.

Boats reach back into great stands of cypress, giants of riverine forests that thrive in water, their flared trunks visible only where the edge of land climbs above the marsh.

Fish camps edge ox-bows once threatened with disconnect when the river was channeled. Thanks to more nature-sensitive policies today, water again flows through more of the river's meanders. Alongside these almost still waters, flocks of wild turkey peck for grass seed. Eagles soar. So do you.