Santa Fe River Rise

That's it, right there on the left. That's where the Santa Fe River comes out of the ground after tunneling under for some three miles. Supposedly it brings with it a lot more water when it emerges then it has when it goes underground. Such a phenomenon also brings with it apocryphal stories of children getting sucked into the aquifer and then expelled months later, three miles downriver. I realized when I got there that I had been there before and the rise itself was frankly a little anticlimactic.

When I left the house this morning, it might as well have been nighttime--there was no hint of the sunrise and the clouds hung low. By the time I put in at 441, it was not much brighter, but the subdued lighting made everything  hallucinatory. I imagined faces in the shadows of submerged logs and ancient cobwebs in the muted grey-greens of the Spanish Moss. No appreciable difference exists between upstream and downstream here, and yet I imagined that my kayak was sucking down into the water as I approached and came back from River Rise. Perhaps the river really was rising here?

The lack of flow I did not imagine, however, and I tested that hypothesis by reclining for 30 minutes about halfway back. I have figured out that if I prop up one of the wings of my PFD, it serves as an excellent pillow. My boat did not move at all the whole time. I came very close, in fact, to falling asleep before I decided I needed to get back and begin the day the rest of the world was beginning.


The most surprising thing about River Rise was running into a friend, out there in the middle of nowhere, co-working with a co-worker. They know a completely different river than I do, and I felt envious of their knowledge. I paddle in relative ignorance out here, but I must admit that I love discovering the natural world as if I were the first person ever to see it.

Newnan's Lake - The Middle

The neighborhood cat pisses on my kayak at night. I don't blame her: it is big, blue and sits right in the middle of her territory. The problem is I don't realize it until I put in and the water "re-activates" the piss and then the smell is with me for the duration. Turns out it was perfect potpourri for what was a nasty outing.

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Nasty isn't always bad. For instance, I loved the nastiness of the choppy, Gatorade-green water and the spray that soaked me. Hell, I even liked the nasty vertigo I felt when I closed my eyes and tried to float. I did not, however, like the nasty 40oz bottles, or the cigarette boxes, or the sandwich wrappers, or the fishing tackle bags that always grace any part of the west shore of Newnan's where it opens up to the road. I am tempted to make a laminated sign or something to tell them to clean their shit up, but what good would it do? If people enjoy sitting in trash when they fish, who am I to stop them?

I was determined to get to the geographical middle of the lake and float, and I kinda did. The getting to the middle was no problem, but the floating was. When I leave it in charge of things, my boat likes to orient itself so that it takes the waves broadside and, since some of the waves were taller than the out-of-the-water part of my boat, I got soaked. This was clearly not going to be a meditative outing.


No matter, I would just sit here and welcome any of the three storms approaching Newnan's, just like my hero John Muir did when he lashed himself to the top of a tree during a thunderstorm. I mean, it's not at all insane to be the tallest thing in a 7,500 acre lake during a thunder and lightning, right? But all the storms stayed around the edge of the lake, so I waited for the Gainesville Area Rowers to slide past during their practice before I pointed my boat to shore and paddled in.

Whenever I am on this side of Newnan's, I use the lily pads as a landmark (watermark?) to get back, except this time the wind had blown them all together, so that at one point I was paddling through nothing but lily pads. I pretty sure it is not okay to do this ecologically, but I had to get through them. Lily pads, please accept my apology. For penance, I will bring a trash bag next time I come back.

Lake Alto

If I do anything for a week or more, I can't go a day without it. So by 6PM today, I was jonesing to get in some water, having enjoyed the decadence of sleeping into until 7AM this morning. Lucky for me, this little jewel is right down the road from me in Waldo. After an hour of paddling, drifting, and watching the clouds gather over the blackest water I've ever seen, I fell in love. I don't know its history, don't even know if it's man-made or natural, but if I ever find a house on this lake, I'll move heaven and earth to move there. It is silent, moody, traffic free, and big enough to actually be a lake.

The maps claim there's a canal leading to Little Lake Santa Fe, and I suppose there is one, after a fashion, but it seems only to be navigable by reptiles and birds. No matter, I simply paddled to the middle of the lake, kicked back, and watched the storm clouds gather over the south shore. Even the sound of the trucks downshifting on 301 fit in somehow. I regretted having to paddle back to the truck.

By the time I got there, a local man was pacing back and forth along the canal. He walked over to where I was pulling my boat out and asked me if I had caught anything. I thought the absence of any fishing equipment might have precluded the question, but I realized soon enough it was just a pretext for his telling me his views about various unjust local, state, and federal laws. I thought I knew where this was going and braced myself for the inevitable anti-Obama tirade. Yet he stopped me in my tracks when he described his worst fear: that the Republicans would be put back in charge. After a lifetime of having my easy assumptions debunked, you'd think I would have learned my lesson by now. No doubt I will run into him again when I return to this lake.

Silver River

I did the Silver River this morning. Yeah, that's right, the whole thing, five miles up and five miles down. Of course, at least three of the downstream miles were the sweetest drifting this side of Huck Finn, but I more than earned my keep paddling upstream. Oh, and my $300 Garmin GPS fell in the water and died, because I thought it would be "cool" to see where I was on the river, and where I was turned out to be a place where GPSs can get irreparably soaked.

The Silver is a heavily trafficked river, so I put in as early as I could get down there and was the first one in the water. I didn't meet a soul until I was on my way back downstream, and the only motorized conveyance I saw was a pontoon boat straight out of "The African Queen," complete with ladies in safari hats. I hid in a little cove until they passed.


I took a half day off from work to do the whole thing, because I've aborted mid-trip so many times on the Silver that I was determined to make it all the way to the glass-bottom boats if it killed me. I'm tore up from the floor up, but it was worth it: I've seen every anhinga, cormorant, ibis, wood duck, and turtle in the state of Florida and many of its finest gators; I know what it's like now to be completely stationary from the waist down for four hours; and I had a day of paddling so vigorous, I had just enough strength to get the kayak back on top of my truck.

Waxing philosophical about paddling is a fool's game and I try and avoid the facile stuff, but drifting for an hour without touching my paddle, letting the current spin my boat around as only it knew how, was nothing short of prayer--even with the GPS emitting its electronic death rattle in the back compartment. To know the birds by their calls, enveloped in the white noise of the cicadas, to feel the river actually lift your boat as the aquifer belches up a fresh supply of water, to begin to know a plant or tree by its smell, well, that's a sense of spirit I don't believe I've ever had.


Tomorrow: Who knows?

R.I.P.

Little Lochloosa Lake from Cross Creek

Feckin' Hydrilla! Is it edible? If so, we're in business in North Central Florida. It's either rotting or fresh and thriving in every lake I've been in, especially Orange and Lochloosa. It wraps around your paddle or propeller or whatever you use for forward progress and, yes, it is invasive and despised by nearly everyone. How invasive? Well, all our hydrilla comes from folks who dumped their aquariums in the lakes in the '60s. Highly adaptable, if you have it on your boat in one lake, it will gladly take root in another as soon as you put in, even if it has dried out a little.

I got a late start, which meant I was paddling into the sun the whole way out. I am privileged just to be able to paddle, I know, but this was blinding and unpleasant, made more so by the airboat nearby. The wind, though, was lovely and brisk and the anhinga posed for me without complaint. In fact, the more I spend time with the birds out on the waters, the more distinctive their personalities become. The Great Blues are old men playing shuffleboard with their polyester trousers hiked up to their nipples; the white egrets are pre-pubescent head cases trying to figure out how to open their lockers at school; and the anhingas are ancient gods, wiser than all of us.

It is rare that I don't feel much better after a paddle than before, but today I was exhausted and petulant and felt like this whole enterprise of daily paddling was a self-indulgent whim that I would tire of soon. I realize I am keeping this blog for me (literally, as I am often the only one who reads it. Damn you, Google Stats!) but there is a strong part of me that hopes it is of some good to others. /self-pity


Well-needed day off tomorrow. I need to clean my boat and do some readjustments and, well, sleep a little.

Newnan's Lake - Northeast

After watching videos like this for an hour last night, I decided it was time to put my big boy pants on and quit talking about alligators until one actually attacks me. Never mind that I seem to startle one every time I go out now. So what? Also, it took my girlfriend, who doesn't paddle every morning but who grew up in Florida, to tell me that they enter the water, not to be aggressive, but to escape land, where they feel trapped in the presence of bigger animals. So I hugged the eastern shore of Newnan's, in between the tussocks and next to the cypress caves because I also wanted to avoided bigger animals--namely the airboating gator hunters, coming back empty-handed again, no doubt. 


Using my camera instead of my phone, as you may have noticed, has allowed me to capture actual wildlife, but this has come at a price. My kayak must have come with the ability to steer directly where I don't want it to when I turn to snap a picture. In the case of the Great Blue Heron at the right, I ended up in a thatch of bullrush with a fat-bellied spider web--and its current resident--wrapped around my head. By the time I had disentangled the web and spider, it lay in a wet clump on the surface of Newnan's Lake. My apologies, dear spider. I'm sure it was a lovely home you had built. I also nearly smacked into several wasps' nests big enough to house my extended family, but I guess the early morning torpor prevented them from raising the cry.

My Kayak KonsoleTM arrived the other day but frankly I had gotten used to not having it. Nevertheless it gives me added "protection" and provides a a good place to house my camera until it inevitably falls into the water someday. The Konsole also makes entering and exiting the kayak a bit more difficult, as the line of scabs on my shins attests.


A ways up the shore from where I was paddling are the native canoes from 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. These were uncovered during a recent drought and remain there, too fragile to move. I don't pretend that my middle-class pleasure crafting in any way compares to what they did to simply survive, but to say I wasn't gratified to be paddling the same waters they did would be a lie. I love Newnan's like a family member at this point; it changes its story with every paddle.

Lochloosa Lake - East Side

On Lochloosa Lake today, I watched an osprey fish for at least 15 minutes. This one had a ritual: it would glide, take a practice dive but level off before entering the water, pull up to about 20 feet, then spear head first into the water, come up with a fish half the size of its body, drop said fish, and then soar back up, shake whatever ospreys have for shoulders, and then do it all over.

I was grateful to witness this, because there isn't much eye candy in the late afternoon on Lochloosa Lake. Houses line the eastern shore and the lake appears to be all water from edge to edge, no makeshift islands or coves. Clearly, I've become spoiled by the early morning. But these late afternoon doldrums forced me to enjoy the simple pleasure of locomotion and the wind the tall clouds brought in to whip up the water.

I put in at a fish camp--a fast retreating, old Florida-style business--and paid my $2 ramp fee to the proprietor. He was sincerely bewildered by my desire to use his lake just to paddle. I told him I wanted to put my boat in every waterway in Florida and he asked "why?" I don't think I was able to give him an answer, but when I pulled my boat back out and was carrying it to the car, he (drinking beer with his buddies now) called out "Just enough to say you done Lochloosa, huh?" I felt a little embarrassed, as if I had been accused of using the lake for less than useful purposes. So I muttered something about coming back some other time or trying it from the west side (which I do plan to do), racked my boat and headed home.


Tomorrow: Newnan's, the northeast part.

Santa Fe River at 441

Well, I woke up my first gator. I guess I get some kind of badge for that? I must have moved right over the top of it, because it rolled off so powerfully that my boat rocked in the wake. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't even scared, no more startled than I was when the fat kid cannonballed next to me at the neighborhood pool growing up. 

I've heard that the Santa Fe goes underground for a while around these parts, so the irrational part of me (the majority) was hoping I'd get sucked under and spewed out a few miles later. But every bit of the water I paddled this morning was above ground.

I didn't really feel as if I had started this one until I was out of earshot of the huge bridge over 441, but once I was, it was a dark, misty beauty of a trip. The Santa Fe is overused; the section that begins at 27 is often the only place people will ever paddle. You will never read about that stretch here, as it is the river equivalent of 13th St. and all that implies. If that makes me a paddling snob, then so be it. 

Yet you would not know that this piece of it belongs to the same river. It may not be remote, but the few homes you see along its banks (and it does have legitimate river banks) are well-kept and I get the impression the owners seem to appreciate how fortunate they are to be part of this river. I collect postcards of this part of old Florida and now I realize why: they represent the idealized landscape that one actually experiences on rivers like this: the Spanish Moss, the towering cypress, the fog, the black water.

I have said before that all manner of wildlife scatter when I enter their midst. It didn't strike me at the time to mention my constant companions on every one of these trips: the water skimmers, who gather into nice V shapes as they swim along with me, and dragonflies, who fly right at the tip of my bow, particularly in the late morning or afternoon.

Also, finally after three weeks or so I've decided to take my camera along with me instead of the phone. Can you tell?

Tomorrow: Somewhere on Newnan's...maybe.

Atsena Otie Key

Big Blue is a saltwater virgin no more. Handled it like a pro too, even with a very choppy channel crossing, water splashing over the bow and sometimes into the cockpit. Atsena Otie is a blue ribbon paddle. Just don't make the mistake of getting out of the boat and wandering down the trail that runs through the center of the island, at least not this time of year. I was covered--and I mean covered--from head to toe within seconds by mosquitos who clearly hadn't tasted blood in a long while. I made haste back to my boat, a one-man experiment to see if malaria still exists in Florida. As late as 1897, Atsena Otie was inhabited, mostly by folks who worked for the pencil company there. I can only surmise that all them were anemic and malarial.

On the drive out to Cedar Key, I fantasized about red snapper jumping into my boat and then a celebratory grilling back home. This almost happened in one of the many coves surrounding the island. They jump high and often, whole schools of them at the same time. The water is too shallow here for motorboats, so I suppose they live here largely unfished. Atsena Otie is all coves, in fact, and I weaved in and out of them all morning, cozied up next to mangroves and grass, scraped across the oyster beds. 

Hugging the shore here keeps you out of the channel chop and that's where the action is anyway. The egrets apparently like saltwater fishing as much as fresh and the cormorants dive here as deftly as do in the Silver River. Sandpipers don't scatter like the other birds, I found, and white egrets and Great Blues apparently ignore each other's territorial calls. Blackbirds won't leave their oystering until you are right up on them.  


Saltwater paddling is a different animal, and I must say I loved the feel, smell, and taste of the salt water. You have to work harder but you know you've been paddling when you're done. I plan to paddle this part of the Gulf coast as often as possible, and a great resource for doing that is Tom, who rents kayaks in Cedar Key. We talked long enough for me to add about 10 trips to my to do list. 

Tomorrow: Day off.

Ocklawaha River - South From The Silver River

Years ago I paddled the Upper Withlacoochee when the river was at historic lows. For two days, I drifted past exposed caves and trees whose roots began five feet above my head. The water in the Ocklawaha is not that low, but it is low enough to reveal a network of cypress roots that would not be out of place in a Dr. Seuss book. In fact, the moment you turn off the well-traveled Silver River (yes, even on a weekday) and south into the Ocklawaha, everything changes: the current and traffic drop to nearly zero, the water turns to black, and the trees seem to be crawling out of the river. Strangeness and silence together are paradise to me, so I regretted this trip ending more than I have any of the others.

Every turn revealed a scene utterly unlike the one that preceded it. While one stretch would be narrow and littered with felled trees, the next would be wide and immaculate. Though it is geographically impossible, these changes preserved the illusion that this river would never end. I plan to find out for myself, very soon, if it does.

One can't help but be curious what the pre-Cross-Florida-Barge-Canal Ocklawaha was like. Back in the day, it was a major tourist destination for folks visiting Silver Springs, but then the Rodman Dam brought run-off from up and down its shores and it became a sad river, an example of our arrogance and bottomless appetite. The section I paddled this morning seems to be holding its own and, although I try to avoid humanizing bodies of water, the Ocklawaha has a dignity I haven't seen anywhere else.

Turning back upstream into the Silver River from the calm Ocklawaha is like being thrown into a washing machine. I can't imagine how many millions of gallons of water the springs thrust under my boat, but I can attest it does not flow in a straight line. Tiny whirlpools and giant uprushes of spring water appeared constantly and I often did not know whether to steer or paddle my way through. Back at the car, I watched at least five trailers unloading their boats. As always, timing is crucial on the water.

Tomorrow: Salt Springs Run.

Camps Canal

Camps Canal, which (allegedly) connects Prairie Creek with River Styx, is dark and still at midday, but at 630AM it is ghostly and asleep: a thin sheet of fog floats inches above the water, shadows appear larger than their source, pockets of heat rise up from God knows where, and it is so silent that the loudest sound is dew dropping from trees and cars crossing the bridge at CR234 a mile back. The day shift is starting to show up (two Great Blues standing by the ruined bridge) and the night shift is heading to wherever it goes in the daytime: note below a Barred Owl and my first kayaking photo capture of a bonafide living creature. I can do a passable Barred Owl impression, so I did and got an affirmative head cock in return.  Victory.


This morning also marked the closest interaction I've had with a large gator since my Okefenokee trek years ago. About 25 feet in front of my bow, I saw a disturbance in the water, a roll big enough to create a small wake. Five feet ahead, it resurfaced to check out my plans for proceeding. As I crept forward, not paddling now but drifting, it submerged and resurfaced several times in a zig-zag pattern, a little too curious about me than I'd like. Could be a protective mom, and frankly I didn't want to find out. About face.


On the way back, I saw just how much a kayak paddle churns up the water, bubbles from shore to shore. I supposed I'd like to think that I am invisible out here and my presence affects nothing, but such is clearly not the case. I have yet to find a creature that doesn't want to get the hell out of my way, and I suppose that is how it should be. Nevertheless, when egrets and herons take off and squawk their irritation or when a flock of wood ducks scatters after I've already passed them, I'd like to communicate that all this activity is unnecessary and I will be out of their way as soon as possible.

Downstream I ran into a ruined bridge. I love this for some reason, and would love to get my hands on a 1950s-era Florida road map to see what road this used to serve (Readers?). Past this bridge the canal gets increasingly sketchy, marked by tree corpses and shallower water, so I turned around to get on with the rest of my day.


This turnaround represents a larger debate I've been having with myself during every outing. To what extent should a solo paddler push his own sense of adventure? For instance, is it safe is get out of my boat in, say, calf-deep water to portage to better water downstream? If I can touch both shores at the same time, should I keep going?


Tomorrow: If I can get out of the house early enough, the Ocklawaha River south from the Silver River.

Ichetucknee River - North End

If a guest from outside "Florida's Eden" asks why you live here, the Ichetucknee is where you take them.  I need to be specific: you do not take them to the Ichetucknee that involves alcohol- and hamburger-gorged hoards floating by the thousands on inner tubes, sunscreen slicks trailing behind them. You wait until after Labor Day and then head for the North entrance as soon as it opens in the morning (8AM) and then paddle to the Midpoint and back (or further, if you're feeling particularly bullish, and it is a mighty upstream paddle).  You won't need any other justification.  If clear, cold water, herons, ibises, egrets, wood storks, kingfishers, pileated woodpeckers, ducks, otters, cardinal flowers, and abundant eel grass--all in the first mile--don't do it for them, they are beyond redemption.

I've done this run before, but I am gobsmacked every time I do. Downstream, your paddle is necessary only for steering, as the current is strong and accelerates as you hit successive springs.  The temptation is to drift all the way to the Santa Fe, to the Suwannee, and out to the Gulf. But then there's the matter of getting back.  It would almost be worth it. We did not see another human being until we got back to the dock, and he only because I had suggested it to him earlier that morning. Call me a misanthrope, but paddling is not something I do well in a crowd. A social person who normally craves the company of others, on the water I prefer to imagine that I am the last man alive. We made the mistake of paddling the Silver River on Labor Day. After we'd sucked in our fifth lungful of motor exhaust and slalomed our third party of Aging Singles Clubs Out On The River, we retreated and I swore never again.

This paddle made up for all that and then some. Accustomed to death-black water and the great unknown beneath me, here I could see every catfish and turtle and felled tree, every gush of new water from the invisible river under the river. I wanted to fall over the side and let the cold seep into me (re-entering a kayak en route is still an untested skill at this point). I wanted to talk back to the otters who snorted at me as I invaded their stretch of eel grass.

Turning around at Midpoint Launch seemed like sacrilege, but we had been fronted the goods by taking the downstream leg first, and now it was time to pay up. But of course, there was no hardship in this. Psychologically, it was humbling to watch trees crawl by, whereas downstream we passed them quicker than we wanted, but since we merely drifted down, the upstream leg only took 15 minutes longer and as we broke through the swirling springs, the current slowed.


John Moran, a photographer who has done more than anyone to document this miraculous place, calls the Ichetucknee a "sacred river," and of course it is. For this reason, I prefer to encounter it when that sacredness does not involve the masses they run through here in the summer.


Tomorrow: Prairie Creek.

Orange Lake to Cross Creek

This is how you get to Cross Creek from Orange Lake at the MKR house: head down the canal, left at the dead end, past the dead cypress, hard right at the dead monarch butterfly, hard right toward the waves of minnows.  You'll know you're near them when you see the white egrets sucking them out of the water and down their crooked gullets.

Cross Creek has become my go-to paddle, the place where reminders why I get up at 6AM to do this are abundant, and I needed that after yesterday. I have no idea what the Creek looks like during the heat of the day, but in the early morning, it is downright hallucinatory: the water an oily black, solid rolls of fog, giant cypress and Spanish Moss catching the sun an hour before it touches the ground, and every imaginable heron, egret, coot, moorhen, or duck.  Even the smell of the rotting hydrilla is not an unpleasant one, and bringing up a fright wig of the stuff with each paddle is a small price to pay for such beauty.

Watching all the creatures do their morning rituals reminds me of nothing so much as the time I biked through the French Quarter early one morning many years ago.  The streets themselves were empty, but at the sides the workday had begun as folks unloaded trucks or washed last night's detritus down the sewer.  


If you're wondering why you don't see any of this amazing wildlife in my pictures, it's because by the time I've retrieved my cell phone, nearly dropped it in the water, and capsized myself, the birds have long since fled. Watching a large man flail around in a kayak of a color not to be found in nature is not something they are apparently into. The grey herons especially let me know this, always yelling at me at they fly away.  Stay tuned, though, someday I will capture a non-dead creature on camera.


Near the Cross Creek bridge I stopped for a bit and watched an enormous wad of hydrilla rise out of the water and then ease back down.  And so it is that I am becoming able to sit directly above a creature who could so easily tear me apart, but who for some reason does not, without completely losing it.


Side note: I am in the process of bribing a Wetlands Scientist buddy of mine to come with me one morning so that he can identify all the plants and wildlife I see every day and, of course, so I can write with a modicum on knowledge about it here.


Tomorrow: Day off...I think.

River Styx 1.5

Yep, that's a salamander

So I'm on the side of the road, getting ready to attack River Styx again when I realize I no longer have the Kayak KonsoleTM that snaps into the front of my cockpit.  It was either stolen out of my car (unlikely) or I left it next to the shore after yesterday's paddle (very likely).  At any rate, it's precisely the kind of specialized accoutrement that stores love to nail you to replace.  It also gives you a false, but vital, sense of protection and makes you feel like you are genuinely inside a kayak.

So my time on the water today was tainted by a sense of physical exposure and by my obsessing over the ideal driving route back to Windsor to retrieve my Konsole. My paddle time is one of the only times (no, make that the only time) that I am "in the moment," as they say.  Not so today. For one, this was an after-work excursion and the deer flies were on me from word go. The water was all churned up from the day's activity and the swampiness of the place just seeped into me.

Nevertheless, I was determined to make a go of it and quickly enough I found the trail that allegedly leads to Orange Lake.  The river looks as if it has literally been cut through the swamp, although to what purpose I do not know, since the river was scarcely wider than my boat.  At times, I was barge-poling more than paddling. Also, the grass and lilies look a tad too planned and formal for this to be a naturally occurring river, but then I know next to nothing of its history.  Whatever the case, it wasn't deep enough because soon my hull was scraping bottom and the prospects only looked worse up ahead. I decided this would be an excursion for later, when I could bring a paddling partner.  You know, someone to identify the where my body was last seen.

I had no turnaround room whatsoever, so I had to make a three-point turn into the lilies, wondering if I was going to have to just get out and turn the boat around.  From unload to reload was a matter of less than 30 minutes.  I was disappointed, sweaty, and still fending off deer flies.

The good news is that I found the quickest way back to Windsor.  The bad news is my Konsole was nowhere to be found.  Whoever took it has a piece of equipment that is only good on a Wilderness Systems Pungo 140.  Congrats.

Tomorrow: I need a serenity paddle.  Cross Creek is always good for that.

Newnan's - Near Windsor

Now I know where all the gators go to get away from the hunters atop their deafening airboat thrones.  The east side of Newnan's is as silent as the south side is loud and I would imagine the gators have been chilling here during Gator Season as long as there have been airboats.  I didn't get 10 feet past shore before seeing several sets of eyes and nostrils drop below the water line.  Fresh bubble trails (nature's sonar indicating "gator below!") greeted me for the rest of the way as I hugged the eastern shore paddling south.


I love paddling out of canals and into the expanse of a lake, especially with the sun bearing down behind me and onto the water ahead. The light creates the illusion that the water rises gently, physics be damned.


And then at once, I see the entire lake, get my bearings, and try to find the dead tree on the west side that sits in the belly of the kidney that is Newnan's shape. The tree is a landmark that all Newnan's boaters are familiar with and I remember it especially since that was where I spoke with some gator hunters a week or so ago.  They couldn't figure out why the hunting spot that was allegedly so fruitful last year brought them nothing this year.  I kept my mouth shut when one of them told me the kayaks were scaring the gators away.  It should be noted I had this conversation looking up at ten feet of airboat.


But back on the east side, the bulrush and hyacinth are so thick, blocking as they do both the sight of the lake and its ripples, that it felt like a river at low ebb. On a day when I'm feeling more brave, I'll try to get in between the broad cypress and into the dark swamp at the lake's edge.


And as long as I'm making bold promises to myself, I plan to circumnavigate Newnan's one day. By my estimate, that's about 15 miles, with nary a current to help me along.  Ever so slowly, I am getting to know and love this historic lake, one that I'd previously dismissed as gator infested, phosphate choked, and overused.  All that is certainly true, but so is the fact that millennia of human beings have lived at its edges.  There is something here that still draws us.


Back out of the water, I discover a front left tire nearly flat to the ground.  That slow leak must have sped up a bit but now I am outside of Windsor and have no idea where the nearest gas station is.  I take my chances and head for Hawthorne Road.

Tomorrow: River Styx again toward Orange Lake.  A more experienced paddler informs me that it does indeed go all the way through.