A month ago, as my wife and I were driving in North Dakota, we came upon something called “The Enchanted Highway,” a secondary road west of Bismarck. A local sculptor has built and erected along the 32-mile-long two-lane highway seven very large metallic sculptures meant to attract drivers/tourists willing to venture off the major roads. Each sculpture has a pull-off from the highway and a picnic shelter that are meant to attract visitors and help small North Dakota towns like Regent avoid extinction.
One of the sculptures, “Geese in Flight,” is listed in the Guinness World Records as the largest scrap-metal sculpture in the world. It measures a huge 154 feet wide and 110 feet tall and can be seen from several miles away. It was that sculpture, in fact, that induced us to detour down the “Enchanted Highway” to see the displays.
One sculpture on that road, “Fisherman’s Dream,” features depictions of local fish, one of them leaping up seventy feet through a metal pond surface. As shown in the photo here, the sculpture has a half-dozen fish of different sizes, including a very impressive leaping trout about to swallow a giant dragonfly. In talking with the designer and builder of the sculptures, Gary Greff, I learned that the fish depicted there are all local and catchable.
I thought immediately how different parts of Florida could build such “fisherman’s dream” sculptures, featuring locally available fish. A place near Miami could depict fish from the sea, for example, sharks, barracudas, sailfish, etc., while an inland town like White Springs could have bass and perch.
Or maybe a local playground could feature sculptures/paintings of state threatened or endangered species like the Atlantic sturgeon, black mouth shiner or crystal darter. When my wife and I were visiting “Fisherman’s Dream” in North Dakota, we watched a busload of children visit the display, climb on the climbable displays, and wander among the “fish.” One can imagine a curious child going up to a teacher at the exhibit and asking questions about the fish. What a teachable moment!
It’s not like we have many if any Florida towns close to extinction, but high school students could put their creative juices to work designing metal sculptures or paintings of locally caught fish for display near ponds and lakes or as murals on local buildings. As in North Dakota, local scout troops and high school shop classes did help design and build the sculptures.
As the father of a fourth-grade teacher in Orlando, I have seen firsthand how curious our students are and how much they want to learn about our state. Does any reader out there know of any such sculptures/paintings in Florida?
Kevin McCarthy, the award-winning author of “South Florida Waterways” (2013 – available at amazon.com for $7), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.