Author: By Lynda Morgenroth, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, February 14, 1999

Page: M5

Section: Travel

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Call it snobbery, or perversity, or crankiness, but I don't like resorts. Or even resort towns. I would rather vacation in a ``real place,'' and find my own amusement.

Florida, which I visit every year to look in on family elders, often seems a statewide resort. I try to see it as my mother, Blanche, and her friends do -- a place of healing sunshine, friendly malls, tantalizing early-bird specials -- but by each day's end, I am surly and discontented. I miss real life, meaning hills, cold, darkness, and drafts; quirky paths, old buildings, rutted roads; and our obstinate New England coastline that just sits there, rocky and brooding, and perhaps even smells at low tide.

The Florida I see is flat and artificial, overdeveloped, with hideous architecture. Every green space on resort grounds is sprayed and posted ``Don't Walk On.'' Every interior is too brightly illuminated and overly air-conditioned. And though one is never farther than a mile or two from an orange tree, the produce in the supermarkets is gagged and untouchable in plastic wrap and Styrofoam.

Still, over the years, I've never quite given up, reasoning that there must be unsprayed grass somewhere. At long last, last spring in Sarasota on the Gulf Coast, I found two enclaves of flowers, trees, and harmony to soothe the cantankerous Northerner. One is a sprawling botanical garden that specializes in orchids and epiphytes, the so-called ``air plants'' that grow piggyback on orchids; the other is a truly wild place, Florida much as it was hundreds of years ago.

Selby Gardens and Myakka River State Park are a kind of botanical yin and yang. Selby, on the grounds of the former home of Marie and William Selby, is in the heart of Sarasota. The genteel surroundings and kind, helpful staff, many of them elderly volunteers, lull the traveler to a gentler aspect of Florida. Myakka, about a 30-minute drive from downtown, is Florida's largest state park, a 29,000-acre habitat that surrounds the meandering Myakka River. This is a place of palm hammocks, inky lagoons, herons striding about the marshes, alligators lifting their snouts through swirling salads of duckweed.

Selby and Myakka are each calm and peaceful, linked with the nature of things, and offer education, inspiration, and refreshment.

Selby Gardens, the ``yin'' of the botanical duo, is a charmed setting, though the term ``estate'' often associated with its origins may suggest too grand an edifice. The Selbys were multimillionaires -- the family fuel business created the Texaco Oil Co. -- but their home was no Newport ``cottage.'' For people of such wealth, with multitiered holdings in the oil and mining businesses, the Selbys lived modestly. As newlyweds, they visited Sarasota and fell in love with its lush, almost tropical beauty. During the 1920s they bought seven acres of land bordering Sarasota Bay and the Hudson Bayou, and built a simple Spanish-style home that nestled amid the laurel and banyan trees.

Marie Selby, a trained musician who grew up in Ohio, had a flair for adventure and a love of the outdoors. She was the first woman to cross the United States by automobile, won trophies at the Sarasota Yacht Club, and helped to found Sarasota's first garden club.

William Selby died in 1956, and the doughty Marie continued to live in her beloved home until she died in 1971, leaving her property to the community as a botanical garden ``for the enjoyment of the general public.'' The garden was redesigned to specialize in epiphytic plants -- in that way distinguishing it from the hundreds of other botanical gardens in the United States. But vestiges of Marie's original garden planning are still in evidence, along with the ancient, sprawling banyan trees she loved, specimens now so huge their canopies create shady outdoor pavilions. Marie wanted to conserve Sarasota's natural beauty, and was disturbed by the construction of high-rise condominiums. She planted the massive rows of bamboo on the bay side to block the view of condo towers.

Today, visitors make their way from setting to setting at Selby, over 20 habitats in all. Mature trees such as banyans, live oaks, palms, and mangroves are grouped around and about gardens that feature succulents, wildflowers, cyclads, and bromeliads. Even for botanical devotees, the display house of orchids is like something out of Lewis Carroll, with varieties so dazzling and intricate as to resist description. The intricate plants are at eye level, on the roof, climbing near waterfalls, and sprawling underfoot.

Selby's koi pond is popular with visitors, as is the bamboo pavilion with its distinctive sound: gently tapping hollow trunks and lush rustling of long, fibrous leaves. The bay walk is its own environment, a secluded spot that combines views of sky, water, and local flora, leading to a pastoral grove of live oaks.

Selby Gardens operates two shops. One, in a charming stucco cottage, focuses on books (gardening, botany, and natural history), cards, geegaws, and toys. An impressive plant shop combines a greenhouse of live plants with an adjoining facility for handmade planters and gardening items. An exotic tropical plant from Selby survived the trip north, thrived in my Cambridge kitchen last spring, and summered on the porch. It has become a shrub.

For the antiresort curmudgeon, the country road (SR 72) to Myakka State Park is worth the trip itself. To see farm critters within 20 minutes of downtown Sarasota gives pause for hope. The road is off Interstate 75.

You know you're someplace special -- some place au natural, not Disney World -- when the attendant at the gate takes your $2, hands you a map and, with a significant glance, a sliver of paper. ``Warning,'' it says in bold type at the top. ``Vultures often have a taste for window moldings and other trim on vehicle and boat trailers. You may want to avoid parking at the lake area parking lot before 10 a.m. to limit chance of damage to your vehicles.''

Myakka is a Xanadu. One of the original Civilian Conservation Corps parks, its immense acreage -- almost 45 square miles, including Myakka River -- spans wetlands, prairie, pine flatlands, and hummock. Its sleepy rural quality and abundant wildlife have a lot to do with its nostalgic atmosphere, but so does the built environment. Of the original 13Conservation Corps buildings, mainly rustic wooden structures, 12 are still in use. The scenic seven-mile drive that winds through the park is for slow-motion traffic only. I first thought I would take photographs but decided against it as neither color nor black-and-white seemed right. Sepia would have been fine.

The river for which the park is named meanders for 12 miles, in places forming two shallow lakes, ideal for wildlife observation and canoeing. At Myakka, many kinds of experiences are possible. One day, I drove my elderly mom through, pausing at the lake. A few other times, I visited on my own and explored around the grassy marshes, took a few of the shorter trails, and the memorable expedition known as the bird walk. A wooden walkway and pier jut into the lake, affording views of the surrounding marshes and life in the water. The walkway is so long, and the water level so high (at least when I was there), I felt like I was in a rowboat, floating, gazing up at the azure sky streaked with breezy, high-altitude clouds. Several unfamiliar water creatures streaked by, including varieties of coots. I saw my first alligator, he pulsing, sly eyed, jawing, moving slowly through vegetation. Earlier, a gaggle of older men with expensive binoculars had told me, ``You need binocs to see anything.'' I pointed out an alligator. They scoffed and insisted he was a rock. Till he moved.

I loved the old-fashioned quality of some of the trails, which reminded me of fusty New England natural history museums. The interpretive signs were not only quaint -- I learned from them. The Boylston Nature Trail through a palm hummock directs one to the life cycle of the sabal palm: Small, fan-shaped seedlings grow along the ground. Trees with ``boots,'' stalky projections along their trunks, are young palms. Older ones are bootless. The winding, level, dirt trail also had signs that directed my attention to remarkable lichen displays. Some tree trunks were dappled with red, white, and green lichens; others were coral, white, and chartreuse, colors a gifted ceramicist might use.

Rigorous recreation is also possible. More than 40 miles of trails snake through the park with primitive camping sites along the way, as well as camping areas for RVs and tents, and even some furnished log cabins. If you bring your own horse, you can use the 15-mile-long riding trail. Canoeing is popular, as is fishing for bass, catfish, and bream.

At the lake, a series of small concessions operate, including an outpost with camping supplies, souvenirs, and bike rentals. The slightly honky-tonk atmosphere at the lakeside tieup -- teenage girls lounging in middy blouses, young married couples taking tours, older women with red nail polish eating Eskimo Pies -- was fun for this Northern gal.

Wildlife and nature tours leave from the lake. Some are conventional, involving simple hikes with guides. Others are more elaborate, and looked hilarious to me as they featured ``Gator Gal,'' the 70-passenger airboat used to get through shallow, grassy places. ``Tram tours'' off paved roads offer glimpses of Myakka's remote areas of subtropical forest and marshland.

If you visit, make sure you stop by the park office first. Free brochures (not offered by the person at the gate) greatly add to your understanding, especially to the disappearance of Florida's Dry Prairie. It's almost gone at Myakka, though some restoration is in process.

This type of landscape -- flat plain covered with grasses, wildflowers, saw palmetto, and scattered cabbage palms -- once dominated Florida's interior. In that era, caracaras, a kind of falcon, soared overhead. Burrowing owls and sandhill cranes moved through the landscape. Grasshopper sparrows and indigo snakes traveled through the wiregrass. Scores of different species of wildflowers thrived.

Leaving Myakka, traveling slowly along the park's light-dappledroad, catching glimpses of the river, and feeling warm breezes filtered by saw palmetto, I felt the tug one feels at leaving a sanctuary. A few cows grazed along the country road that led back to I-75 and to the world of artificially bright green grass. In earlier times, there had been dry prairie here, and it seemed to stretch endlessly. Still, I'd learned that some reclamation was being done. I'd seen an alligator, coots, and ``boots'' on trees. I'd found sanctuary in many hues and shades of green.

Myakka River State Park is at 13207 S.R. 72, Sarasota, FL 34241. Telephone 941-361-6411 or visit myakka(at sign)ix.netcom.com.