The Ichetucknee Is Great All The Time..

...except on hot summer weekends when it carries a surface of flesh, rubber, sunscreen, and the various effluvia that only 6,000 humans per day can produce. But then I digress before I even get started. Today was not one of those days and the worst I had to contend with was eight folks, each with kayaks twice as expensive as mine (and mine wasn't cheap), getting out as I was putting in. They had all the kayaking accoutrements too, bilge pumps, special booties, kayaking vests...you know, the stuff you never actually need.

After that, I had that big beautiful river all to myself, and so I took my sweet time meandering and drifting and checking out the scene under water. After it has had a few months to recover from the summer onslaught, there is nothing quite so pristine as the Itchetucknee. I've sampled my share of spring-fed rivers, but none compare to this one.

My first interface with the Ichetucknee was as one of the floating hoard many years ago. As soon as we passed the last pullout before the end, the skies opened, and there was nothing to do but drift in the cold, needling rain. I loved it, but my friends did not. I see that trip now as a life lesson: no matter how hard I paddled with my hands, I could go no faster than the current carried me.

And that current today is formidable, especially at the North End. My paddle may have touched water five times at the most on the way downstream. Upstream was the slog I expected it to be, especially when I hit the gushes of spring water fresh from the aquifer. My paddling chops are better than they were months back when I did this run last, so I made it back even faster than it took me to do the downstream leg. I don't expect to do it again until after the tourists have had their way with it.

Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain

The bottom of my kayak is a document of just how often I have scraped the bottom of every waterway in North Florida. I figured low water, like having to pick up others' trash on the river, was the price I had to pay to do what I love. So unlike pretty much everyone else in Gainesville on Monday, I greeted the rain with praises of thanksgiving, because I knew it meant high, blessedly navigable water. Where there is high water, there are new places heretofore unreachable.

So imagine my disappointment when I rushed out to the Santa Fe just south of Worthington Springs only to find the sign above blocking my progress. If the water was now too high and really too low before, then where was the magic middle ground? Was this simply a budget thing, to take any opportunity to close the "park" to save money? To my eyes, the water wasn't too high at all. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was perfect.

But with no gates blocking the New River right around the bend, I did not go unrewarded yesterday and, yes, I did see a new part of the New River. The river east of the bridge usually chokes out from debris in times of low water, but I was able to get through a few hundred yards of it with my formidable paddling skills and a rusty machete. The prize for all this work was a place of sublime isolation and beauty. The sun was going down and everything fairly glowed between the long shadows. I sat and listened to the water spill over new places in the river and when it started getting dark and I paddling easily back to the car.


Note: I will be leaving the country soon for a short while and plan to use this space to document my experiences. I won't be doing any paddling there that I know of, but I hope that what I write about will be germane to everyone who reads it.

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.