Scattering Coots On Orange Lake

Then there are the times you have to make yourself go. Maybe it was a hangover from the 4-day weekend spent reassuring family and friends that I really was okay, really, and that I foresaw no trouble finding another job, when in truth it really did worry me. Maybe it was hearing all the cars outside my window going to work in the morning. Maybe it was the nightly work dreams where I am clearly trying to make sense of it all. Sometimes it's just a matter of hauling the carcass out to the water to immerse myself in the changing and the changeless.

I've formed an emotional carapace over the years that serves me well in times like these. I can talk to store clerks, strangers, fellow paddlers, damn near anyone, and they have no inkling what is going on inside. This is good, in case you're wondering. I used to be a book far too open and raw for anyone to want to read. Now I can be a person among people on my worst days. So it was that I was able to carry on a 30-minute conversation with a paddling couple just coming out of Orange Lake as I was heading in. They live on the Suwannee and spend their days kayaking and fishing and are both lean, tanned, and wiry. I wanted their life, but spent my time with them sharing a bit of mine.

Orange Lake is now Coot Central and I spent my time out on the water steering between the spatterdock and making them take off and land over and over. I did not realize how loud they are until I closed my eyes to listen. Like midtown Manhattan. Orange Lake is a lake that wants to be a swamp or prairie. It does not seem to be shore-bound and is constantly draining through a hole in the aquifer. The result is a series of islands where you cannot actually trod, but you can't see through them either. Orange Lake is a lake that used to be, but we will continue to call it a lake, because things like that don't change.

River Styx, A Graphic Short Story

Chasing Vultures On The Suwannee

Anybody who's spent more than 24 hours in this part of Florida has been on the Suwannee, so no trailblazing here. But when you're down in the water, as you are in a kayak, you see things that people doing 40 knots between jumping sturgeon cannot see. For one thing, it's a wide and freaky river with currents going both up and downriver. For another, its levels can fluctuate wildly, as the high fortresses that line each side attest. Also, a good bit of it is exposed limestone swiss cheese. I am not used to paddling under bluffs this high.

I've never seen this many vultures in one place either, both black and turkey. About 50 of them seemed to be circling a spot upriver, but as I moved closer the congregation seemed to move. I could get no closer. Some of them were so high up they became mere dots against the sky. But as I reclined in my kayak, a few of them circled over me, lower and lower. Vulture paranoia? Could be.

But I cannot pretend, even for the purposes of drama, that this is "Wild Florida." I pulled up to the bank about halfway down and climbed the sandy bluff there to see what was on the other side. It was Highway 27, a mere 50 feet from where I stood. I should have known it was so close to the road, because I filled up the back of my boat with trash. Nevertheless, from my vantage point, I could see at least two currents in the river. I was counting on an effortless float back to the put in, but that was not to be. Hard work up and hard work back. Maybe this is a river for motorboats.


Back at the car, a state park worker drove up to talk, his face ravaged by skin cancer from years as a roofer. He was worker under a program funded by the stimulus for folks over 55. He decided to be a park guide. Pretty cool. He told me the park was one of the most lucrative in Florida, some 3.4 million dollars in revenue last year. I found that gratifying. Even with all the technology and other distractions, Big Ass Rivers still draw us to their banks.

Rusty Trees On The Oklawaha

This is the part of the Oklawaha where no one goes: the fishing isn't as good and water goes dark south of the springs. Of course, this is why I love it. I came here not too long ago, but it has since been transformed into an autumn canvas of floating leaves and rusty trees. I've never had the time to follow this river as far south as I'd like, but a camping trip along its banks is in the offing.

The swirling springs end as soon as you turn south from the Silver River and its hydrilla farms. Even mere drifting feels too fast to take everything in. I haven't quite worked out paddling-with-others etiquette. Is it cool to paddle ahead occasionally? Do I over-explain river phenomena I've noticed? At any rate, some of the best conversations I've had have been on the river. Not the lake, not the Gulf. The river, every time. We naturally internalize its meandering, I suppose.

Cypress turns rusty in the fall. I never knew this until someone pointed it out to me the other day. I guess when you look at them every day, it's hard to notice subtle changes. But here, the colors are obvious and unmistakable. Rust, green, and brown in the trees and black, sky blue, and green in the water, along with the occasional brilliant red leaf. The birds remain abundant here--ibis, cormorant, anhinga, herons--but the gators have gone...somewhere. I only saw one this time. I had come to love them and now miss seeing them.


I'm hankering for more than the three-to-four-hour surgical paddling strike. I have two relatively huge compartments in my boat and theoretically I could go out for a few days. I now have the time so why not? I welcome any suggestions and, in the meantime, look for some overnight tales in these pages.

Camps Canal In Which We Gain A Few More Precious Feet Toward River Styx

As I've mentioned before, getting from Newnan's Lake to Orange Lake is the paddling holy grail in this area. As far as I know it has never been done successfully in modern times. Yet that has not stopped me from trying. As I see it, two problems areas remain unnavigable: a small stretch between Prairie Creek and Camps Canal and another longer stretch between Camps and River Styx. Evidence abounds of attempts to clear this portion in the form of sawed-off trees that now clog the channel. It is gratifying to see this same desire to break through in others, but I think it will take at five people who are willing to go on a do-or-die mission to accomplish this. I volunteer my services.

Nevertheless, this space between the lakes stands as the crowning jewel of Alachua County and I have been in few places more lovely anywhere in the world. The water is the color of jade and trees no less than 40 feet high line its banks. Old, broken bridges and water gates appear out of nowhere as markers of previous attempts to create and control its flow. In places the canal lines the swamp adjacent to Paynes Prairie where, in the case of today's outing, we seriously pissed off a Great Blue Heron. "You kids get outta my yard!" it seemed to say.

My favorite places here are the "discovery" areas where one has to somehow move past debris to get to the next jaw-dropping space. Up to now I have moved through these areas almost completely ignorant of where I was geographically. Now I have a GPS that can actually pick up a signal and mark my progress (conventional maps are useless, as they show lakes where there is but a trickle). Henceforth, I will mark foot-by-foot my progress into the problem areas. Oh, and anyone who want to go on that do-or-die mission, please contact me.

Paddling With Pain

I got some news yesterday that I refuse to qualify as bad. Suffice to say that it has turned my world upside down and that I spent a good bit of the day today feeling less than carefree. The last thing I wanted to do was paddle...so that's exactly what I did. I needed to see something that hadn't changed, that was exactly where I left it and would be long after I am gone. I needed physically to move over obstacles and water.

So I headed up the road to Lake Sampson and Lake Rowell, which are connected by a canopied canal and forded by a creosote-soaked railroad bridge. Sampson is damn near dry, but the water left is clear to the bottom. In the mid-afternoon sun, it is like moving through liquid amber. Sampson is a relatively small lake but even that is deceptive; I missed the canal entrance twice on the way back. The shoreline features seemed to change as I watched them.

These lakes are well loved by area coots. I saw literally thousands of them, especially on Rowell, where their take off en masse sounded like a cross between a train and a thunderstorm. A coot, like any duck I guess, apparently can't decide whether to walk or fly when it takes off, so it does both and rips the surface of the water. Times that by about a thousand.


I gave it more than a perfunctory shot today. I bagged two lakes, saw something I'd never seen before, and met the obligatory couple back at the ramp. Seriously, a pair of people always seems to show up as I am racking my boat and I spend anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes chatting with them. This time it was an elderly hunter and his wife, who had retired, inexplicably, to Starke. This is how I learn about the places I paddle, from the locals who always ask me if I have caught any fish. Kayaking for kayaking's sake is a strange concept, I suppose. But for me, today, it was a necessity.

Prairie Creek

I've written about Prairie Creek before, but this outing was different. For one thing, I brought a friend along, a bit of a newcomer to kayaking but an advanced skydiver who is entirely at home in the air doing things most of us would consider insane. I wanted to see how he handled a horizontal adventure. He handled it fine but I would imagine his upper body feels like week-old hamburger today.


I also ventured farther down the creek than I have ever been, which is to that narrow point between the creek and Camps Canal where you might as well leave your boats behind and walk. There has been a movement afoot for some years to designate this as part of the Potano Paddling Trail, but I must confess that I hope this becomes no more accessible than it is right now, because where humans have trouble venturing is still wild and almost trash free.

I had hoped to see some snakes and gators, but they hid themselves fairly well. That could be because we were splashing like 3-year-old kids in the bathtub trying to get past the sandbars and logs in our path, of which there were many. The small downstream trickle helped us build up a head of steam getting over these on the way down, but coming back seemed more like digging than paddling. By the time we got to the car, I was wet and covered with debris.

The stretch of water from Newnan's to Orange Lake is a living example of why I live here. It is wild, active with life, dark, secret, and redolent of history. At times, I am more at home here than my own house. We saw examples of nearly every bird that also considers this home: the scolding kingfisher, the ubiquitous Great Blue Heron, bald eagles, anhingas, ibises, egrets. We even saw a horse, that may or may not have been feral. The creek even has moods.  The last time I was here, it was the heart of darkness; this time it was a glowing, bright stream.


Unfortunately, we knew we were almost back when we saw a sharp uptick in the number of beer cans, bottles, and general fishing trash. I don't quite know what to do about this problem, but it seems to be more than simply a problem of aesthetics. It is the difference between using and co-existing. I do know that it makes me sad.

Pellicer Creek

As in space travel, paddling for me is measured in time, not distance. For instance, five miles downstream may be an hour, but the same distance upstream may be three hours. The five miles itself is essentially meaningless. Such was the case with the strange, perplexing, counter-intuitive Pellicer Creek. Creeks, even tidal creeks, are supposed to flow to the sea, right? Near as I can tell, Pellicer (a creek wider than the Oklawaha and Santa Fe Rivers combined in places) does not--or so I found out when I decided to turn around after 1.5 hours of relatively easy downstream paddling.

The return was brutal, an against-the-current workout with a stiff 25-mile-per-hour headwind the whole way. I realized there are circumstances where I could be paddling with all my might and gain no progress whatsoever. Suffice to say I was done paddling an hour before I actually made it back to the put in. When I got back, a fisherman asked me what it was like to paddle against the current. I told him I hadn't realized an upstream return was in the cards until I had turned around.


The creek is salt marsh the entire way. I know because I tasted the water. Marsh grasses lined both sides, with only the occasional isolated forest on the south side to break up the landscape. My familiar paddling companion, the kingfisher, was there to berate me most of the way. Other than that, and one Great Blue Heron and one bald eagle, I saw no wildlife--unless you include the shirtless, portly gent who spoke to me from his deck.

Pellicer runs under I-95 and Route 1, which in itself was strange. As soon as I thought I had broken through to some wilderness, a major interstate and a stand of billboards crosses my path. I wanted to continue past Route 1 (and I am really glad I didn't) because it looked like things were about to get a little more interesting. I did have a bit of a revelation, though. I wonder if it may be possible to carry a makeshift sail with me on my boat. With the wind as it was, I believe I could have reach hull speed very quickly. 


Nevertheless, a day paddling to exhaustion is a good day. I find myself, however, increasingly addicted to the wilder aspects of it. I want to get lost. I want to go where there is no easy route back to a state park parking lot. I want to go where I see no evidence of human presence, not even a floating beer can. My favorite nature writers begin at such places and I crave going where they have and have not.

Oklawaha River - Gore's Landing

Election days depress me. No matter if my guy is winning or not, I'm still reminded how separated I am from my fellow human beings. So I voted, took the afternoon off, and headed out to the river. I had originally planned to do an overnight to escape the fallout, but that didn't come through. A few hours would have to do.


I wanted to enter the river at one of the less popular places (the Silver River and Eureka launch points are typically quite busy). Gore's Landing is about halfway between these two and way off the beaten path. I was the only one there, but I still ran into two motorboats on the river, one going faster than I have ever seen a motorboat go down a river. The Oklawaha is clearly a major artery for area fishermen. On this same river several weeks back, I passed a man standing up in his boat fly fishing, casting his line again and again. I asked him if he was using bait or a fly. He replied that he was using neither and that he simply liked the meditative act of repetitive casting. A kindred spirit.

The river north of the Silver River is also abundantly spring-fed, so the water is mostly clear (hence my first underwater shot above) and a strenuous upstream paddle. I stopped often to recover and also to scout for possible camping sites. The places I saw seemed marshy and riddled with what looked like piles of bear feces (thus solving the age-old bear-shitting-in-the-woods quandary, but also arguing strongly against camping here.) It is also clearly someone's priority to keep this part of the river navigable, as I saw many cleared and uprooted trees along both sides of the banks.

The bonus of a vigorous upstream is a heavenly downstream return. I reclined and floated the entire way back and arose just in time to see my launch point go by. My wish for everyone, political friends and enemies alike, is to enjoy such a float sometime. It clears the cobwebs, slows the blood flow, calms the nerves, soothes the knitted brow, and restores the republic.

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.