New Years on the Suwannee

Moving is hard. I hate it. I spent the better part of a year deciding to move, dreading moving, actually moving, and adjusting to moving. There have been a lot of changes for me recently and I haven’t welcomed all of them.

I spent a week at home in Tallahassee over Christmas, and as nice as it was to see everyone I grew up with it was pretty overwhelming. A lot of people asking when I was moving back, when I was starting a new farm, if I was excited about starting school, and I just didn’t know what to say. What, I’ve lived in a new place for a few months now, I don’t really know anyone, I make long lists of house chores to keep myself occupied, and all I know about grad school is I’m signed up to take data analysis? Life’s great!

Social exhaustion led me to beg Travis to plan us a little New Year’s camping trip. I didn’t want to deal with trying to find a party in Tallahassee or Gainesville, and I didn’t really have the energy to talk to anyone anyway. So Travis picked a weekend on the Suwannee, starting up at its source in the Okeefenokee Swamp in South Georgia and paddling for two nights. Perfect opportunity to try out the new canoe he got me for Christmas.

The canoe was loaded, our stuff was packed, and then I stabbed myself in the hand.

If you have the opportunity to use scissors to open a package, use those instead of a dull pocket knife, ok?

I wanted to avoid New Years so desperately that I was ready to continue on, and it took my hand swelling and bruising to almost twice its size for me to consent to an emergency room visit. I didn't need stitches, but we were in for a night in Gainesville despite it all.

Our neighbors up the street invited us last minute to their New Year’s potluck at their cute little house, complete with their whole work crew from Swallowtail Farm and a super impressive farm food spread. It was truly lovely. However, I was in such a bad mood that all I could think was that my house was too small and janky to every have a party like this, and even if I had friends I don’t have a farm anymore so I wouldn’t have anything to feed them. Instead of being friendly (a challenge for me even in a good mood), I hid and took sulky bathroom selfies.

As it happens every New Year, there was a countdown, there was champagne, and when we woke up the next day it was 2015. Everything was still 100% packed, and we left the house in record time. A couple hours later, we arrived at the boat ramp in Fargo, Georgia.

It was a truly wintry day. Luckily it wasn’t too cold, but if we had snow in these parts I would have guessed we were about to get some heavy flurries. The sky was grey and heavy, and it drove out the shadows that should have been following us. Besides that, we had spent whole week before Christmas in the rain, and turns out that rain was still seeping all throughout the swamp. The river was only a couple of feet below flood stage, and the riverbanks were pushed back a good 50 feet on either side in some places. All we could see were the tippy tops of tree branches sticking out of solid black water, leaving the width and height of the submerged trunks to the imagination. Though most of Florida is evergreen in every season, the swamps are one place where most of the trees shed their leaves throughout the darkest months. The bare riverbanks, grey skies, and drowning trees made for quiet, stark scenery.

Eventually we decided that the light was getting low enough to justify pulling over on a sandbank, soggy conditions made finding an eligible camping site was a little more challenging. One of the things I like about camping on the is that Suwannee the white, sandy rivershore makes it almost like you're setting up tent at the beach. And don't worry, I came prepared with everything you need for a lucky New Years Day-- black-eyed peas, collards, and leftover champagne.

Turns out that the river is beautiful at night.

There's not a ton to do on a canoe trip besides talk with your lone companion, read aloud from your Cracker culture history book, and think about things. I feel like I've lost a lot over the past six months-- my livelihood, my friends, my home, and ultimately my identity. It's hard for me to figure out who I am when I don't have my job and my community to remind me that I'm important. But whatever I've lost, it's already happened. I can't get those things back right now. I need to stop acting like a baby.

If I'm going to make my life feel better right now, I need to recognize the things that I do have: a good head on my shoulders, a family who cares about me, and boyfriend who loves me. Those things won't bring back my farm or my friends, but it's not like I have nothing. I decided I would try harder to make life good again instead of grieving for what I've given up.

So that's how I ushered in 2015, and finished my last days of freedom before grad school classes started a few days later. Life is hard, but I'm making it work.

Goose Pasture

I've been canoeing on the Wacissa River countless times-- a classic summer day trip means loading up the canoe, driving 20 minutes to the head spring, and canoeing for a quarter mile down to Big Blue spring to go swimming.

But it's winter-- almost Christmas, in fact-- and a dip in Big Blue wasn't really on my radar. I had my sights set higher. For years I've been hearing about the canoe trail further downstream on the Wacissa. Keep paddling for about 9 miles and you come upon a bankside campsite called Goose Pasture where you can spend the night. Follow the river further and there's a man-made connection between the Wacissa and Aucilla Rivers called the Slave Canal. The Aucilla flows out to the Gulf. I have been DYING to see what's downstream.

Travis and I were up in Tallahassee for the weekend, but instead of planning a camping trip I just hung out and missed the sleepover window. So we'll just have to wait for another long weekend for a two night epic canoe trip to the Gulf. But we recruited my friend Lilly for an adventure that lasted a little longer than any of us expected-- turns out leaving a car at the bottom of the river for a shuttle and canoeing nine miles takes a reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyy long time, and you probably shouldn't have anything else planned for that day. A work Christmas party for example. Poor Lilly had a rush back into town in her Tevas to buy a white elephant gift, but I swear she said it was worth it.

It was worth it to see dynamic parts of the river I've never paddled. It starts out as a wide, bright flow, then splits into smaller passages till it's whittled down to narrow streams flanked by a canopy of trees. We spotted the familiar eel grass, catching the sunlight like flowing gems. We experienced the river in the winter, the cypress trees truly bald instead of greened out, the sky totally clear instead of being piled high with cumulus clouds. And even though we had to drive back in the dark, the river at sunset made the trip.

Return to Juniper Wilderness

We did some figuring recently and realized that the time Travis and I have spent sleeping in a bed together and spent sleeping in a tent together is probably neck and neck. Ten weeks on bike tour and more than a dozen camping trips over the past two and a half years versus two months of living in a house together…

That being said, you’d think we’d be better at camping by now. You know? How many times do we have to sleep in the woods to make sure we remember toilet paper? I blame it on camping excitement. Moving, unemployment, few friends, and house renovations are making these past few months a period of adjustment I will not look back on fondly, so when Travis said we could go on a camping trip I got really excited to do something FUN. And besides, I had something to celebrate: I got into grad school at the University of Florida!!!!

After some last minute planning (and poor packing), we decided on a backpacking trip returning to the portion of the Florida Trail in the Ocala National Forest. It’s close, it’s beautiful, it’s nice this time of year. But there was one thing we forgot: hunting season started that weekend.

Sooooooooo. Instead of exploring a different section of the forest (avoiding the dozens of hunters we saw entering the woods with rifles), we stuck to the Juniper Wilderness, where hunting is prohibited. This is basically the same section of trail we hiked the last time we visited the Ocala National Forest, we just started a few miles further north on the Yearling Trail.

The Yearling Trail cuts a path to the interior of the Ocala National Forest where people used to live. Some intrepid settlers in the 1840s decided that they were going to make their homesteads in Pat's Island, which is not an island in water, but a shady island of slightly more fertile soil in an ocean of arid, inhospitable scrub.

A few families struck out raising cattle, growing subsistence gardens, and making moonshine. In its heyday, a dozen families lived on the island, but when the National Forest was created in 1908 most of the families had sold their homesteads. By the time Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings visited in the 1930s, there was only one couple left living there, and they gave her the premise for her book The Yearling. When the book was turned into a movie, it was filmed on site on a forest homestead. Now, only some house foundations and a cemetery remain as evidence of these people's existence.

But let's take a moment to imagine what life was like on Pat's Island. No electricity. Dependent on hunting, farming, and fishing to survive. No refuge from summertime heat and biting insects. The gravestones in the cemetery are the first clue: hardly anyone lived very long, and forest fires and hunting accidents are among the causes of death. But generations of families built houses in different sections of the Island, facing hardship and creating a way of life that has disappeared. I imagined how would it be like to walk a mile along a forest path to Grandma's house, or the daily walk to the sinkhole for water to cook with. It's not a life that most of us could make by with these days.

The sun goes down early now, so ended our "epic" three hour hike and set up the tent in the remaining daylight, then kept walking down the path to Hidden Pond, a little springfed jewel with nice fresh water to refill the Camelback (we miraculously remembered chlorine packets). It was magic shadow hour at the pond, and the surrounding meadows, scrub, and longleaf pines put on quite a little show for us. Sometimes even a short hike has a worthwhile reward.

At dawn we walked the perimeter of a meadow bordering palmetto scrub to see who we could find in the early morning. The resident scrub jay families kept an eye on us as we entered their respective piece of forest, sending the sentinel to fly up to the top of the burnt remains of an oak tree and squawk to her siblings about us. Each family had a different attitude as to whether they should treat us a visitors or intruders. The friendlier families all flew to a tree to watch us cautiously as a unit, while the more threatened families squawked without stopping and chased us down the trail, the equivalent of banging pots and pans together till we crossed the invisible border of their territory.

We spotted other little forest treasures that you can only really notice on foot.

Meanwhile the sky never really got sunny. It had been cloudy since the day before, and then some tiny little sprinkles started falling. The weather forecast said 20% chance of rain, and I guess that 20% felt like it needed to fall on us. Just as we entered a section of oak forest, we heard the rush of rain sweeping through the trees, and we dashed for the “shelter” of palm fronds under an oak tree. But this was not a light shower. This was some full on rain.

We tried to compensate with our two person rain robe, but realized that this rain robe was really better suited for one person, and even then it wasn't very effective. Note to self: tent rainflies are for tents, not people.

The walk back was wet, but blessedly brief. The Juniper Wilderness just really wanted to make sure we brought a little bit of it back with us in the form of rain-soaked jeans and mud-encrusted boots. Forty-five minutes later we were back at the truck, peeling off our clothes, changing into dry long underwear, driving into Ocala for coffee and thanking Baby Jesus that we hadn't decided on a two nighter.

Manatee Awareness Month: Throwback to Blue Springs

November! It's Manatee Awareness Month! What can you do to help manatees? Top Four Things: 1) Keep manatees on the endangered species list 2) Support manatee sanctuaries  3) Get involved with clean water initiatives 4)  ADOPT A MANATEE! In honor of MAW, we are posting a throwback to the culmination of last year's Manatee Count, when we went to search for our one-flippered adopted manatee, Margarito.

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I debated very little about what I should get Travis for Christmas in 2013.

The man is from Manatee County, FL. He has a giant chestpiece tattoo prominently featuring two manatees (along with a mermaid). Obviously, the right thing to do was to adopt him a manatee from the Save the Manatee Club.

The Adopt-A-Manatee program is an ingenious fundraising campaign from the state's preeminent manatee activism group. If I recall correctly, my parents adopted me a manatee when I was little, which sparked my obsession way back in the day. This is how it works. You pay $35 (a pitiable sum). Then you choose from a list which manatee you'd like to adopt. Then the Save the Manatee Club sends you a certificate of adoption, a biography of your manatee, and a gift, which right now is a heart-shaped ornament. Totally worth it.

The list of adoptable manatees is organized by where they migrate to in the winter- Tampa, Alabama, Homasassa, and Blue Spring. I browsed the options to see which one really spoke to me. Rocket? Phyllis? Whiskers???? All very tempting choices. But then I stumbled on Margarito.

Margarito's mom is Lily, and she brought him to Blue Spring for the first time in 1984. He was supposed to be named Margarita after Margaritaville (Jimmy Buffet is a major supporter of the Save the Manatee Club). However, when he was born male some bilingual problem-solver christened him with possibly the most ridiculous name you can give a one ton sea mammal. But that's not all. He likes to hang out with the guys, spending a lot of time with Howie and Doc, but his best friend is Brutus, the 1900 lb manatee who has been tracked since the 70s. Also, poor Margarito's tail is also pretty chewed up from a motorboat collision, the dude is missing a flipper because he got tangled up in fishing line (throw your fishing line away in the trash NOT IN THE RIVER). I think he's kind of accident prone. Margarito was clearly Travis' manatee.

Serendipitously, Margarito spends the winters in Blue Spring, which is one of the manatee viewing sites listed on Manatee Count 2013/14. So for Travis' birthday in January, I planned a trip to Blue Spring to go find Margarito.

Blue Spring has been pumping fresh water into the St. Johns River for ages, but it's only been protected by the state since the 1970s, when it was turned into a State Park and a manatee refuge. Last winter over 400 manatees were spotted there, but when the park was first established there were only 35 manatees who used it as their winter haven near Orange City, FL.

Because of the massive number of manatees present in the cooler months, the spring run is completely closed off to swimmers and boaters though there is an observation deck to allow people to see them doing their thing. However, scientists take advantage of the conditions to do research, and over the years have created an extensive family tree. Sick and injured manatees are also easier to pick out to be rescued for rehabilitation. The huge number of people who make the trip to to the park put the manatees in the spotlight, as well as the issues that affect them, like clean water and ecology. And if you can't make it to Blue Spring, you can always watch the live ManaTV webcam.

After our trek into the Ocala National Forest, we headed off for Orange City. We arrived about an hour before the park closed, and man. There were a LOT of manatees. The spring run is a little tributary running into the main river, and it is clear and blue and beautiful. According to the gift shop sign there were 164 manatees present that day! I really got to boost the count on the spreadsheet, which, as all you Type A folks know, is extremely satisfying.

I set out on the main mission of the day: Operation Find Margarito. This was not an easy task. Most of the manatees were hanging out on the other side of the river near the opposite bank, and there were so many of them! It was difficult to pick out the one with the one flipper. So we switched tactics and looked for one with his mangled tail. Still no good. I resorted to calling his name. FUTILE. In the end, I had to console myself with the knowledge he had been spotted earlier in the season and must have been one of the manatees we saw that day.

So here's the thing guys. Florida's springs are vital to the survival of manatees, as well as the ecosystems they're apart of. I'm gonna go ahead and get back on my soap box. There are hundreds of lifestyle changes you can make to protect our water, like conserving water and electricity, driving less, buying less, living small, and supporting organic farms and chemical free landscaping. There are also tangible success stories accomplished by folks who care about our environment, like a North Florida dairy farmer who uses a closed loop system to recycle manure on his farm instead of letting it leach into the aquifer, or the citizens of Wakulla County who banded together to prevent development around the Wakulla Springs head springs. But here's something else you can do: support clean water initiatives. In fact, here's an easy thing you can do, just sign this petition. Learn about where your water comes from, and more importantly where it goes after you use it. Because clean and safe water is not just necessary for manatees, we need it too.