by KENT MORSE, Special to Escape to SW Florida

Visitor and residents alike refer to Southwest Florida as a paradise. The irony is that most never really experience the natural world that constitutes this paradise on its own terms. The beaches are accessible and we flock to them. But the everglades and mangroves that define the character of this region and support the vast majority of its wildlife seems remote and forbidding, certain to involve some danger or unpleasantness to experience. We imagine something more like an expedition than a vacation.

The truth is that regardless of your age or physical stamina and with as much preparation as you would make to go to the beach, you can find yourself in this other world that exists alongside us. The key that opens the door to this other world is a kayak.

One minute you are negotiating traffic, waiting at lights; the next minute you are sitting in a stable kayak, inches from the water, paddling along the edge of mangroves. You can still see homes in the distance, motor powered boats plying the channels and maybe even hear cars passing on a nearby bridge.

And then something miraculous happens. An opening only a few feet wider than your kayak appears in the mangroves. You venture in and follow the winding tunnel -- it is a tunnel, for above you the mangroves have grown together, shutting off any view of the sky.

On either side of your boat the elongated roots of the trees seem to be stopped momentarily in the act of marching toward you through the black muck. Numerous small crabs scurry about and the whole experience has an eerie, prehistoric feel to it.

At one bend is the shell of a small motorboat, half sunk in the muck as if the guardians have said, "From this point on, whoever enters here must leave behind the implements of modern society."

Eventually you see that ahead the narrow channel seems to widen again -- sunlight on a mud flat and you catch a glimpse of pink. Quietly moving forward you see that the tunnel has opened up into a large hidden lagoon.

Along the mudflat at its entrance four birds wade deliberately through the shallow, their reflections perfectly mirrored in the stillness. The three largest have a pink-hued plumage and odd spatula-like bills. They are roseate spoonbills. The fourth, an ibis, is smaller and white, its beak long and narrow curving toward the water.

You feel immediately you have entered another world and know you will never forget the experience. On this particular day, I explored this lagoon which then opened up into yet another where we saw 12 more of the roseate spoonbills roosting in the trees above, as well as wood storks and ibis, herons, egrets and numerous other species.

Thirty minutes later I was in a local restaurant swapping stories of the experience with friends.

This morning, I returned to Matlacha, a one hour drive north of my home in Naples, 30 miles west of Fort Myers. Matlacha is located on what is known as the Lee Island Coast and has the unassuming feel of an old fishing town. Off Pine Island Road, at the Old Fish House Marina is a small shack flanked by fishing boats, home to Gulf Coast Kayaks.

I have rented kayaks from these folks before, but today I had made reservations to join the naturalist guided manatee nature tour they lead between Thanksgiving and St. Patrick's day.

These gentlest of giants are more widely dispersed throughout the year but during the winter months congregate near natural springs where they can avail themselves of the warmer water. According to our guide, Mel, volunteers from the Mote Aquarium had been to this particular spring the previous day and counted 42 manatees. I've been a guide in Alaska and seen vacationers so fixated on seeing a whale or bear that they missed nearly everything else, so while hopeful, I wouldn't have been disappointed if I didn't see a manatee. Better to just enjoy the feeling of gliding along, inches from the water and keep open to the entire experience.

It probably goes without saying, but it was a beautiful day, sunny, 68 degrees with only a slight breeze blowing. John who runs things at the shack, and Mel helped me into a sit-on-top kayak and I floated around the channel waiting for their other clients to get into the water.

The feeling of being on the water put a smile on my face for all the reasons that sitting in the driver's seat of a car does not put a smile on my face. I floated and watched an osprey fly by carrying nesting material in its mouth. Toward the opening to the bay a cluster of brown pelicans floated and across from the shack in front of mobile homes five white egrets stood sentinel.

It turns out that I was to be joined by only one other couple, Ted and Barbara, two people who had never been in a Kayak before. While Mel described the basics of kayaking a noisy group of gulls overhead fought over a fish one of them had taken the trouble to catch. Barbara was having a little difficulty catching on to the kayak paddle.

"I am going to be a trouble person," she said a bit self-consciously. This is, of course, part of the group experience -- the social dynamics of people with varying abilities attempting something together. If you abhor those situations and express confidence with the kayak, the folks at Gulf Coast will point you in the right direction and you can be off at your own pace. Today I was committed to the group and tried to put Barbara at ease -- "I am a troubled person too," I said.

We set off together, more or less. Mel pointed out a group of ibis and while he described how they use their long curved beaks to probe tube worm holes, I was distracted by Barbara who was moving toward what looked like an inevitable collision with the Miss Southern Comfort, a shrimp boat at the dock. The good thing about kayaks is that everything happens slowly, and with a little help from Mel, disaster was avoided and we were once again on our way.