Kate

 

An environmentally friendly female Everglades Park ranger is forced to hole up in a mud hut in the Everglades to ride out a category five hurricane with her adversary, a rich, slick and of course, hot, real estate developer .

 

When Kate Greeley, a 40ish Everglades Park ranger, encounters a dead alligator evidently killed by a land development survey team, the politically blue, environmentally green woman sees red. She has but no alternative other than to present the evidence at a development zoning meeting in front of the City Council. There, she confronts her adversary, Everett Greene, for the first time. The overly confident Everett owns the Evergreen Corporation - the umbrella for a development, real estate, mortgage consortium. As would be expected, on the affluent west coast of Florida, things go Everett’s way and Kate’s protest appears to be for naught. Oh, by the way, a huge hurricane churns in the Gulf, potentially targeting Naples in a little more than a day. Ho-hum, go the Floridians.

 

The next day when Kate arrives at work, she’s challenged by government attorneys who rudely informs her she had no business protesting at the city council meeting. That should be a matter for the federal lawyers, not her. She is firmly ordered by the attorney and her supervisor to back off. Frustrated and angry, Kate makes her rounds into the Glades which includes checking on the status of an innovative adobe shelter she built to observe the creatures of the Everglades.

 

That night, as predicted, the Hurricane, which coincidentally shares a name with Kate (could be changed to something else if that’s too Katrina-ish), moves onshore. Kate, being the respectful sort when it comes to nature, seeks shelter at a community auditorium. Everett, on the other hand, decides to ride it out on his condo on the beach - a condo that a resident recently claimed was built with cost-cutting materials. When his building commences rapid disintegration at the hand of the hurricane, Everett jumps in his Hummer and heads to public shelter; the same shelter Kate sought.

 

Everett engages his real estate development opponent and attempts to woo her, probably for land purposes but he’s the kind of guy that’d take whatever comes with the result. Kate stands with her resolve. The only complication to her resolve comes from nature.

 

This building serving as public shelter doesn’t stand a chance in this unprecedented storm. As the building weakens and shows signs of collapse, Kate and Everett flee. She directs him to the ranger station so they can head out in a small boat into the Glades. How nuts is that?

 

Actually, it’s a great idea. They arrive in Kate’s shelter, wet but safe, and in an ingenious structure that will withstand the storm.

 

The problem now: a woman and a man, at odds politically and philosophically, and every other way one might imagine, must ride out a massive hurricane in the middle of nowhere. Kate initially gives Everett the rundown about what they’ll do after the storm, given that the small boat they brought in will likely be lost. Then the games begin. Everett has the agenda of flipping Kate to see the wisdom of his likely to occur real estate development project that encroaches upon the park's pristine resources. Kate has no interest in hearing any of it. Suffice it to say the psychological terror endured by Virginia Wolff holds no candle to this night.

 

As the night progresses through arguments and lies and confrontations and back story, Kate decides to pull out a bottle of Everglades moonshine. She tells Everett it’s because she’s not liking him very much and just wants to get through the night. As the alcohol diminishes, so do defenses and honest moments happen, much to the surprise of both. When the eye of the storm finally arrives, they’re both pretty toasted.

 

When they emerge from the hut for a time to savor the eerie beauty of the eye, Kate sees Everett’s aura and captures a glimpse of his spirit. In that moment, coaxed by moonshine, the inevitable happens. After the intimate interlude, Kate insists upon sleep almost as nothing transpired at all. Tomorrow she promises will be the end of the world as they know it when they return to town.

 

When morning arrives Everett wakes up to find a five-foot gator snuggled between Kate and himself. In the ensuing effort to remove the gator, a snake drops from the top of the hut onto Kate just at the point of success. As she reacts, the gator flails, taking three bites of her, one of the chomps tearing the arteries on the inside of her thigh. Her life slipping quickly away, she conveys her sense of Everett to him and pleads for his reconsideration on the development and makes an appeal for his redemption. To a dying woman, he makes those promises... promises to a woman that for once he’ll keep.

 

Everett paddles out of the Everglades in an inflatable raft, Kate’s lifeless body in his lap. Mist and sunbeams compete for dominance in the humid air as Everett disappears into the mist, a changed man because of Kate.