River Styx Redux

It is clear to me now that I am obsessed with River Styx and have been ever since I heard the name associated with this area. Like its mythological namesake, it is mysterious, dark, impenetrable. You know those dreams where you're wandering through a house that is supposed to be yours, but you don't recognize it, and every time you open a door you discover a new room? River Styx is like that. Well, the section north of the 346 bridge is like that. The section running south to Orange Lake is beautiful in its own right.

The first thing that greeted us this time was a mass of bloated deer entrails floating in the water, clearly thrown out there for the gators to clean up. As they had obviously been there a while, I concluded that the area gators had departed for higher water (except for an adorable foot-long one sitting on a log). The vultures were driven to distraction watching this feast float there untouched and they with no evolutionary apparatus with which to access it.


Ah, but the north side. Maps for this area show a vast, open waterway, but the reality is a narrow trail, lined by rich thatches of cattail? Wild rice? At any rate, they served as doors to the next "room." Every time we thought we'd come to the end, we'd break through and another section of the river, utterly unlike the one before it, would reveal itself. There is something primal, childlike, and frightening about the effect this had on me, and I'm not entirely certain I've found the words to describe it yet. I do know that the experience fascinated and haunted me for the rest of the day and into the night.

As this this part of the journey did not wear us out, we decided to attack the south part on the way to Orange Lake.  This did, in fact, wear us completely out, especially with the sun bearing down on us the whole way. I have noticed this phenomenon where, so close to the surface, it is difficult to judge distances. In this case, no matter how far we progressed, the treeline at the edge of the lake remained the same distance away. Finally, we turned around and used the last bit of energy we had left to get back and rack the boats.