Airboat Encounters, Pt. 2: A True Story Told In Graphic Form

Back In The Saddle

When you've been dragging river bottoms for the past 3 months, you don't let 2 inches of rain go to waste. So I (and Big Blue with a brand new patch on its arse) headed out to River Styx in the hopes that I would finally be able to get through to Orange Lake. I was not disappointed. In fact, it turned out to be a perfect storm of an outing, including hundreds of Sand Hill Cranes, an otter, a "waterfall/rapids," as well as the requisite discarded body parts I've come to expect with any trip to River Styx.

Up and back, this took about two hours and at certain points I lost all sense of time, digging into the water, watching the debris float up and back down to the bottom, surprising the coots and Sand Hills. Toward the end of the downstream leg, I came upon an ad hoc rapids, a waterfall about half a foot high, where the level dropped noticeably. Checking the portage opportunities for ny return, I went for it and dropped down into Orange Lake, and the birds just exploded.

On the way back, I saw bubble trails but they were too slight for even a baby alligator. Soon, an otter surfaced and then curved back down to wherever they hide from us. In the distance, I heard a Barred Owl, apparently an insomniac, or awakened from my flailing upstream. If you need me, I will be back there today checking out the other side of the bridge. Like I said, you don't waste a good rain.

My Kayak's Got A Hole In It: A Reflection

The Last Voyage Of
Big Blue...For Now

Yeah, I guess I'm a little proud that inside of six months I've managed to wear a hole in the stern of my kayak. At an average of four trips a week for 24+ weeks, that's some committed paddling. It also demonstrates that I haven't shrunk from taking it through some tough places. Nevertheless, when you pop the back compartment of a boat you bought new less than a year ago and see it filled with river water, it does tend to bum you out. So permit me this moment of reflection on why I do this.


I have spent more time than I care to think about on the shore of a swamp, or lake, or river wondering what it would be like to go where people can't walk or drive. I remember standing at the edge of Wakulla Springs one day for an hour, fantasizing about what lay beyond the treeline. That I did such as this for so many years without actually getting a boat of my own and finding out says a lot about me.


I've lived a good part of my life vicariously: experiencing bands from the floor instead of the stage, keeping up with friends who up and moved to Paris without doing it myself, reading others' books instead of writing one. The list runs to the horizon and beyond, and this isn't an easy thing for me to admit to myself. Kayaking is my small way of entering the active world, of actually discovering what happens beyond that treeline that anyone with a car can see from the shore. Sliding into that boat for the first time was a true homecoming, and I have tried to represent that experience in these pages.


By Saturday evening, my kayak will be repaired with plastic that does not match the color of the rest of the boat. I consider this a trophy. In the guitar world, such dings are called "character marks," and so this will be. For once, I have followed through with a dream of mine and it has taken me places that in some cases aren't even on the map. In however many years I have left, I plan to spend a good bit of that time in the unmapped places. Stay tuned.

The Creek Ain't Rising

We've had a couple inches of rain in the past few weeks so the time was ripe for paddling without obstructions--or so I thought. Hopes were high when I pulled into the parking lot off Hawthorne Road and saw the lake much higher than I remembered it. But it was an optical illusion. Everything's low and dead. The hard freezes have whacked the bullrush barriers for the most part, so I suppose everything seemed wider. But I was dragging bottom the whole way and had to turn around far sooner than I expected.

Paddling through the seasons means watching familiar waterways change personalities. Even the winter crew of birds has arrived--yellow warblers, rails and such--so it was like going back to an old school where all the teachers have changed except for that really old one who always said you'd never do anything with your life (Great Blue Heron). I suppose fishing for bottom feeders has dropped off too, because I saw almost no trash this time. Needless to say, the gators too are hunkered down wherever they go for the winter.

The highlight this time out was doing battle with the comically territorial geese that prowl Prairie Creek. They sensed me long before they saw me, or me them, and emitted their trademark rusty gate call to arms. As I sat there stuck in sand, the scout geese paddled my way, honking all the while. When it became clear that I wasn't budging, they turned their abundant white tails and paddled back to their crew.

Where's The New River?

The one I'm talking about runs vaguely north of the Santa Fe and is considered a tributary of it. I've lived 19 miles south of this river for  22 years without even knowing about it, so it was a new river for me. Union and Bradford locals sure know about, though, because they leave their water bottles, beer cans (Natty Light? Really?), and mutilated chunks of styrofoam as markers of their existence. They also leave nylon strings with now-rusty fishing hooks hanging from every horizontal branch on the river. One snagged my jacket so abruptly it stopped my kayak.

None of this detracts, strangely enough, from the sense that this is a hidden, stark, and lovely river with exposed bluffs and overhanging branches likes giant spider webs. So close to the Santa Fe, this river looks nothing like it, at least to these eyes. It's wider, clearer, and its banks more accessible (hence the debris). About 2 miles downriver, I decided to turn around: this is a river I want to share with someone else, and I will bring a trash bag.

In one of those revelations that come to us as something utterly new, but seem so obvious later, I realized on this river that my love for wild places, outside places--which has, as I've gotten older, morphed into a dedicated obsession--comes from my father who taught me to paddle, camp, hike, and sleep with the windows open to hear the crickets and the roosters. Because of him I know what it's like to sleep under a tin roof in a rain storm, something every human being should experience. Whenever I find myself in the middle of nowhere (like hiking deep in a damp, mossy forest in British Columbia or carrying my son down the Narrows of Zion National Park) he is right there with me.  Thanks Daddy.  I love you.