Close Encounters of the Turd Kind

Hiking in Ichetucknee Forest this morning, I was reminded that nature observation requires a few basic skills. Spontaneity is high on the list. When you spot a pair of slugs slowly sliding over each other, you must be willing to forego all plans and stop to watch them. You may never again see two slugs interacting. Next, you must have the patience to sit quietly for hours watching your slimy subjects for any hint of interesting behavior. Being observant also helps. Make mental notes of distinguishing marks that will help you identify the species when you get home to your field guide (you know, the “field guide to slugs;” the one you’ve stayed up way-too-late reading way-too-many times). You must be content with meager results. This will ease the disappointment of realizing dusk is falling quickly and your slugs have barely moved for two hours. Be thorough. Before you leave, move close so you can see any smaller physical details. You might even want to prod them a little with a stick to see their undersides. Lastly, as in all things, you should have a sense of humor. It will get you through little setbacks, like when you discover that two slugs you’ve been observing for a couple of hours are actually a pair of squirrel turds.

While I’m usually unwavering in my appreciation of nature’s gifts, I could have spent far less time contemplating those two turds and been content. As I sulked down the trail toward home, I consoled myself with the notion that I probably wasn’t the only creature out there that could list turd-watching (do aficionados prefer to call it “turding?”) as one of the most significant achievements of my day. In fact, some species live for the stuff.

In the hardwoods and swamps of the Ichetucknee Forest, and in virtually every other habitat in Florida, scarab beetles hailing from nearly 250 known species spend their days cleaning up waste produced by larger species (in Florida, these feces specialists are commonly know as "turd tumblers"). High in nutrients (a lot of plant material passes through the digestive tracts of herbivores undigested) and easily obtained, dung is a precious commodity for which scarabs compete savagely. Ideally, they will avoid conflict by being first to arrive at a new heap where they’ll quickly sculpt a ball several times their own size and roll it to a waiting underground chamber. The beetle then lays eggs inside the dung ball which will serve as food for the larvae when they hatch.

In most cases, being first on the scene is largely a matter of luck; being at the right place when a passing animal unloads. But, a few species have learned to buck the odds. Every morning in the forests of Panama, certain species of scarab fly into the tree canopy in search of howler monkeys. Positioning themselves strategically on the animals butt, the scarab waits for the monkey to defecate. It then jumps aboard the first train out of the station and clings for dear life as it plummets 100 feet to the ground. Similar, though less extreme dramas are played out on the back-side of other animals such as kangaroos, wallabees and sloths.

But turd-tumbling scarabs are not the only connoisseurs of feces. If you’ve ever had a pet rabbit, you know about their not-so-adorable habit of eating their own poop. Coprophagy is common to a wide assortment of animal species; mostly herbivores, whose digestive systems are relatively inefficient. Giving the food a second pass through the digestive tract allows the animal to digest more of the nutrients from it. Pigs, rabbits and most rodents are habitual coprophags.

For some animals, including our beloved manatees, coprophagy aids digestion in another way. Because plant material is difficult to digest, these animal’s digestive systems are full of bacteria that break it down. However, these bacteria are often absent in newborn calves. To get bacteria in their own gut, the babies must eat some bacteria-rich feces of an adult.

For those species whose survival doesn’t depend on feces, attitudes toward the stuff are decidedly less enthusiastic. Most birds avoid the stuff altogether; a fact that was capitalized upon by the Big Girl (mother nature) when she designed the amazingly turd-like caterpillars of swallowtail butterflies. A similar strategy keeps the white egg masses of Dobson flies safe from small birds as they glean the leaves of trees overhanging rivers, where these eggs are deposited.

While we can't know what goes on in a bird's brain, it's often hard not to anthropomorphize. For instance, when we see terns deliberately (and very accurately) dropping turd bombs on animals approaching their nests in sand dunes, they clearly seem to know it is disgusting. For turkey vultures, being disgusting comes naturally. Besides being famously hard-to-watch when eating, they are equally gross when they poop on their own legs and feet to keep them cool.
The only animals that consider wearing poop to be a good thing are some humans. In some cultures, it is good luck when a bird poops on your head. I prefer to take my chances.

(NOTE: I’m often asked what inspires these “reveries” (thanks Lola). Today’s came on the wings of a Carolina wren. As I sat on my patio, staring at a blank, imposing computer screen and hoping for a sign, a tiny wren landed on top of the monitor. It seemed as startled by its choice of landing spot as I was and immediately flew away. But, not before depositing a little gift on my screen. Not quite the sign I was looking for, but who am I to question the Muse.)

Listening to Water

Of all Leonardao Da Vinci’s great ideas, one of my favorites is also one of his simplest. No diagrams, no assembly required, just a simple re-purposing of an everyday item—the canoe paddle. He suggested if we put its blade into water and then pressed our ear against its shaft, we could hear the sounds of aquatic life. Once again, Leonardo was way ahead of it’s time. Not only did this idea pre-date sonar, it predated the belief that the sea was worth listening to.

In a study published in 2009, a group of biologists in Australia described a rich “vocal repertoire” of vocalizations among long-necked freshwater turtles, Chelodina oblonga. The list of sounds included “clacks, clicks, squawks,hoots, short chirps, high short chirps, medium chirps, long chirps, high calls, cries or wails, hooos, grunts, growls, blow bursts, staccatos, a wild howl, and drum rolling.” Of course, to assume that other turtles—including any of the 15 species in our beloved Santa Fe—have similar “vocabulary” is to enter dangerous and highly unscientific territory. But, non-scientifically speaking, it seems unlikely that one species of turtle is chatting away in a language of 17 unique sounds and that others are mute. I’d love to think that that our own turtles occasionally kick back their heads and let out a “wild howl,” in decibels we can’t hear--their own version of the alligator bellow—or that on nights when the moon is just so, and the owls assure them there are no humans in earshot, they crowd onto logs and launch into fevered bouts of “drum rolling.”.

Unlike turtle talk, there’s nothing subtle about alligator bellows. When William Bartram first described alligators arching their back and “making the earth tremble with their thunder,” few people believed him. It would be decades before this phenomenon was confirmed by others. Both male and female gators bellow without regard to the hour of day or night or if they’re on land or in water. The only quiet time is winter. It’s assumed to be a general announcement of the gator’s presence, but this too is only speculation. The most spectacular bellowing is the “water dance,” done only by the males. In this display, the male rears his head, lifts his tail and then powerfully contracts his body, causing it to vibrate. If the gator is in water, the contraction causes water between the scales of its back to spray up in a misty fountain. Diane Ackerman described it beautifully, in “A Natural History of the Senses,” as “frying diamonds.”

To be clear, it’s not that marine animals make sounds that’s new, it’s the notion that they use these sounds for communication. In the days of wooden ships, sailors could hear the eerie sounds of whale’s songs emanating up from the ships hull. Some people speculate that this was the origin of the myth of Sirens, the legendary beauties who sang enchanting songs from the rocky shore and caused ships to come close and crash.

To date, researchers have identified over 1,000 fish that make sounds.

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Minyard Connor savors his weightlessness. He’s oblivious to the gentle whitecaps churning thirty feet above him. He’s been down for over a minute without an air tank, listening and watching. In his years as a free diver, Minyard has learned that seas are noisy places. He recognizes the calls and chirps of the fish he’s hired to find by men like the one whose fishing line is now attached to his spear; the one who is likely swilling his fifth Bud Light in the boat overhead. Minyard knows the sounds, but he doesn’t know their meanings. He’s okay with that. Down here, at least, he’s not expected to understand.

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Researchers have sorted out some of the details. For instance, it’s mostly male fish that make sounds. In those cases where a purpose has been determined, it’s usually for mating and courtship. Butterfly fish whisper, Seahorses make a click by tossing back their heads, streaked gurnards and rockfish growl. As we paddle the waters of Chassahowitzka and Suncoast Keys this weekend, we’ll listen for the “bubble and thud” of eels, the “cronk” of sea robins, the “grunting” of toadfish and the “umph” of bass.

The list of aquatic species that make the water hum with their chatter is diverse. The one thing most of them have in common is the absence of external ears. Instead they have an assortment of pressure-detecting organs. Fish have lateral lines on their sides, blind cave fish have neuromasts on their heads, manatees have a depression on their cheek, and so on, but none of them have ears. And, therein lays the key to our own deafness in water. No matter how hard Minyard listens, he’ll never hear more than a fraction of the conversation going on all around him, any more than we can hear the radio waves in our own terrestrial world of light air. We go about our days clueless that the air is full of Lady Gaga and Garrison Keillor until we turn on our high-tech sensory device—our radio. All the happy melodies and fascinating discussions that take place constantly in the rivers and seas, will only ever be heard by researchers with their gadgets. And even then, it will be an opera—beautiful music and babel.

As for using our paddles as listening devices, it appears that in this instance, Da Vinci had an idea better suited to poets than engineers. But, I’m okay with that. I find comfort in knowing that besides holding up my hat, my ears allow me to hear such beautiful sounds as bird song, the wind in palms, fireside stories of people like my friend Minyard, and the finest of all river sounds, the blip, swish, plink of a canoe paddle doing the task it was designed for.

Shipwrecks of North Florida

4/01/09 

People are often surprised to  hear there are shipwrecks resting peacefully on the bottoms of many  North Florida’s rivers. Though, in reality, only a few would  actually qualify as “ships” and most were not so much “wrecks”  as “aquatic disappointments.” But, semantics aside, the remains of ill-fated vessels can be seen in many of our local waterways. And, in their stories we often find an intriguing glimpse into a moment in that area’s past.

Ironically, the most recently discovered sunken vessels in local water are also  the oldest. During the severe drought of 2000, over 100 Indian dugout  canoes were found in the exposed muck in Newnan’s Lake. Their ages—determined by UF archaeologists to range from 500 to over 5000 years old—suggest these were sunk (or abandoned) individually over a long period rather than in a single, large-scale event. After being thoroughly studied and recorded, the canoes were consigned to the safest place possible for preservation—the same muck from which they came. When the rains finally returned, the lake filled and covered the canoes. It is there, nestled in the muck and covered by tannic water that the Newnans Lake canoes will remain until the next severe drought reveals them and offers another generation of Floridians a wonderful reminder that we are just the latest in a long line of people who have lived on this land and paddled these waters.

But if you’d rather not wait for the next drought to see an Indian dugout, you’re in luck. Resting on the bottom of one of the twenty headsprings of Silver River, the watchful paddler with a good map will spot a relatively intact dugout canoe beautifully situated on a patch of white sand. Although not exactly “in situ,” (this boat was brought from a site a few miles downstream) the crystal clear waters of this river afford a spectacular setting. In fact, the curious explorer with a good map (or, better yet, a good guide ;o) will find a virtual smorgasbord of boat wrecks in Silver River, whose stories span many centuries. A couple of hundred yards from the dugout, another spring holds the remains of two wooden boats. One appears to have been some sort of rowboat. The other was once thought to date back to the Spanish period of the 17^th  or 18^th centuries. But recent examination revealed clues that it might actually be one of the early glass-bottom boats.

 A prehistoric dugout canoe in Silver River  

A couple of bends in the river brings you to yet another boat—the remains of this one consisting of a large, metal hull. Unlike most of Florida’s aquatic disappointments, however, this one was never meant to float. It was placed here as a prop from the Jerry Lewis movie “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”

Four miles downstream, two more sets of decaying remains are reminders of  Silver River’s colorful steamboat era. On my tours, I often wait to allow customers to enjoy making their own “discovery,” that they are passing over the wooden ribs of an old boat hull. If they miss it, I’ll tell them to look down. Local lore claims these are from a nineteenth century stern-wheeler. Continuing downstream, a few more bends in the river brings us to another ill-fated steamer that apparently ended its career earlier than intended. The remains of this one are partially out of the water. Beams, metal fittings and hardware litter the forest floor.

Many  of the more interesting wrecks in North Florida’s waters date back to steamboat days. Even such unexpected places as Paynes Prairie, which was filled with water for nearly twenty years in the late 1800’s, saw steamboat traffic. When the prairie’s natural, underground drain unplugged, the lake dried and a number of small boats were stranded. Most famous among them was the steam yacht, Chacala, whose salvaged anchor sits alongside the main street into Micanopy. Her propeller is displayed in the Paynes Prairie State Park Visitors Center.

                      Remains of an early glass-bottomed boat in Silver River

Other  local lakes, including Orange and Lochloosa also saw steamboat activity. But it was on Lake Santa Fe that Alachua counties heftiest steamboats operated. With the completion of two canals in 1881, one connecting the railroad town of Waldo to Lake Alto and the other connecting Lake Alto to Santa Fe Lake, commercial steamboats were soon making regular runs to the small lakeside community of Melrose—now essentially a port town. Next to the dock on Melrose Bay, guests found lodging at Bay View, which still operates, off and on, as a bed and breakfast.

The  three best known steamers to operate on Lake Santa Fe were the F.S. Lewis, the Alert, and the City of Melrose. Of these, only the F.S. Lewis is known to have ended her days on Lake Santa Fe, burning in the Santa Fe canal in 1884. There’s no account of the final resting place for the City of Melrose, but the decaying remains of two large wooden hulls, one near Bayview’s dock, and the other in the pass out of Melrose Bay, definitely tweak the imagination. Alert was moved to the Suwannee where she eventually sunk. It is reported that part of her top side could be seen sticking out of the water for some time afterwards.

The  Suwannee River has been the final resting place for many boats over the centuries, including two of north Florida’s best known aquatic disappointments. The most impressive existing remains are those of The City of Hawkinsville, the largest steamer to ply the Suwannee. Her 141 ft. hull remains remarkably intact in the tannin stained waters near Old Town. She was the last commercial steam boat on the river, operating until May of 1922. Her last job was hauling materials for the rail bridge near Old Town. Her job complete, the grande damme of the Suwannee was moored along the river’s west bank, within sight of the bridge she had helped build, where she languished regally. Eventually, as her owner’s descendants squabbled over rightful ownership, the City of Hawkinsville quietly slipped under the water and settled on the sandy river bottom.

Today,  this submerged paddle-wheeler has the distinction of being one of only two official underwater archaeological sites in the State. But visiting this wreck is no typical day in the park. While the top of the boat is relatively shallow, viewing it can be challenging. Dark, tannin-stained water, fluctuating water levels and unpredictable currents make this a visit for advanced, open-water divers. Anyone interested in exploring the site should check with local dive shops or State officials for rules and regulations.

Another  way to see the City  of Hawkinsville is  from the same rail bridge she helped build. Now part of the Nature Coast Trail State Park, this bridge offers a lofty perch from which you can look downstream (south) and view the wreck, or, more specifically, the buoys marking the submerged boat’s starboard side (she’s facing upstream). While you won’t see the actual boat, it’s a great place to let your imagination run wild, conjuring images of the City of  Hawkinsville and other steamers sloshing their way up river over a century ago.

Forty  miles to the north, remains of another famous Suwannee steamer, the  Madison,  can be seen in the (usually) clear waters of Troy Spring. The Madison  was a much smaller boat than the Hawkinsville and her remains are less impressive. But what she lacks in physical stature, the little Madison  more than makes up for in colorful history.

Owned  and piloted by James Tucker, the Madison played an important role in the lives of settlers living along the entire length of the Suwannee, as far up as Branford, and sometimes beyond. During her heyday in the 1850’s, she ran two trips per month between Cedar Key and Branford, stopping at riverside communities along the way.

With  the onset of Civil War, the Madison’s  days of glory were  numbered. Tucker was ordered north with a group of local militia, so  to avoid having the boat captured by Union forces in his absence, he decided to sink her. When local townsfolk in Branford heard the news, they asked Tucker to allow one last shipment to be delivered. He agreed, asking that they sink the boat after the trip. True to their word, a group of men scuttled the Madison  in the mouth of Troy Springs. Today, visitors to Troy Spring State  Park often slipping on a mask and snorkel and swimming out to view  the wooden ribs of her hull, easily visible in the shallow water near the mouth of the spring run.

                   Waccasassa River slowly claims a wayward shrimp boat

With advances in both boat  construction and boat retrieval equipment over the past century,  there are relatively few post–steamboat era wrecks in North  Florida’s inland waterways. Those we do see are relatively small and uninteresting and their stories usually involve nothing more colorful than a sad fishermen who misjudged the weather, the river or their boats seaworthiness. Examples of these more recent aquatic disappointments can be seen in the Ocklawaha and the Waccasassa, where sits the decaying remains of a commercial shrimp boat that floundered here nearly a decade ago—probably the victim of a tropical storm out of the Gulf. And, while these modern wrecks don’t have the colorful stories of older ones, they do offer a lesson. In spite of our finest advances in technology, the Big Girl always has the final say. Given the chance, she can lay claim to even the most impressive of modern human contrivances.

Many Faces of Santa Fe River

10/08/08

Anyone who has spent time on Santa Fe River knows her to be a seductress--complex, mysterious and always beautiful. Many people, from diverse backgrounds have courted her over the years, and from each we've gained a little insight into her complex nature.


From cave divers and geologists, we know that her public face--the gentle-flowing, spring studded stream that saunters with seeming indifference toward the Suwannee--is but one of many. Below the surface, a network of underground "side-streams" flow unseen, sometimes touching and joining adjacent channels and at other times veering away in different directions. When one of these unseen, subterranean channels joins the surface channel, it interacts with the surface flow in one of two ways. If it's a strong, highly pressurized channel, it adds some of its flow to the surface river by way of a spring. If the underground stream is weak, the heavier surface water forces its way down into the subterranean stream. This is called a siphon or swallet hole. On the surface, this appears as a drain in the riverbed, into which some of the river disappears.

From biologists, we know that the freshwater springs along the Santa Fe (and throughout North Florida) are among the most diverse, species-rich freshwater systems in the world. The clarity of spring water allows sunlight to reach great depths, allowing a wide variety of algae, phytoplankton and larger green plants to thrive. These, in turn, host a complex web of animal life.

From archaeologists and historians, we know Santa Fe to have once been an important route of travel and commerce for both indigenous peoples and the European settlers who followed. Village sites, burial mounds and abundant artifacts found along the river, show that countless generations, stretching back thousands of years, knew the Santa Fe as more than just an avenue of travel--it was home.

This weekend, we'll be sharing time with Santa Fe in a few of her more somber, gentle moods. Saturday morning, we'll explore the region of her origins - the Northern Highlands. Paddling up from I-75, we'll see a quiet section of the river that relatively few people ever see (or even know about), up to the confluence of Olustee Creek.


That evening, we'll see a side of the river usually known only by her many crepuscular (dusk) and nocturnal (night) residents. On this moonlight paddle, we'll share the river with such nocturnal residents as beavers, raccoons, possums and armadillos. And, if you want to expand your exploration of the Santa Fe's nocturnal life even further, bring mask, snorkeling gear and underwater light and have a swim in the spring. Among the many critters you might see working the springs night-shift are crayfish, eels, freshwater shrimp, apple snails, tadpole madtoms, stinkpot turtles and the ever-present (at night) loggerhead musk turtles.

On Tuesday, we're paddling up to see River Rise--the granddaddy of Santa Fe springs where the entire river re-emerges after flowing for three miles underground.

To Catch a Fish

I thought I had planned the perfect sunrise paddle. Full moon? Check! Water level high enough for paddling? Check!; Jim Cantore’s promise of clear skies for a fine sunrise? Check! But it never occurred to me that some local fishing organization might choose to stage a huge bass-fishing tournament for this same morning, launching from this same boat ramp. It was one of the more disheartening moments in my guiding career. And yet, for all the disappointment and the angst I felt as I apologized to my bleary-eyed crew (did I mention it was 5 AM?) the over-riding sentiment was horror for the pending fate of Orange Lake’s fish population. Because the decks of each shiny, high-dollar boats that we watched backing into the water, held an arsenal of rods, reels and fish-catching machinery that made the Normandy landing look like happy hour on Daytona Beach. Looking at this high-tech armada, I marveled at how far Floridians have come in our quest to deprive fish of any semblance of hope.

When I was young, I wondered how primitive fishermen ever survived. Armed with little more than bone hooks and line made from animal sinew, I imagined coming home with an actual fish was cause for a village-wide celebration, with lots of drums, frenzied dancing and something involving scantily clad virgins. It wasn’t until I was a teenager, learning outdoor lore and aspiring to one day wear animal skins and live in a mud-hut, that I started to fully appreciate the prowess of primitive fishermen.

One of my best sources for such information was Tom McCullough, an expert survivalist and a treasure trove of quirky nature lore. We’d spend long days wandering the woods around north Florida, him mumbling snippets of plant or animal lore while I watched for poison ivy. Usually, I would file his observations in the ‘interesting but useless trivia’ lobe of my brain, but occasionally one would leak into the dangerous ‘I could do that!’ lobe. Such was the case when Tom told me about making fish nets from spider webs.

It was day three of a five-day survival camp in the Ocala National Forest; the culminating event for an Outdoor Survival course he was teaching through Santa Fe Community College. We had spent the morning grubbing for edible roots in a low, dense oak hammock. Emerging from the underbrush, we looked at each other and broke out laughing. We were both totally covered with the honey-glazed webs of golden orb weaver spiders (Nephila sp). As we peeled off our silky drapes, Tom mentioned that some Indonesian tribes made fishing nets from Nephila webs. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but I didn’t discard it either--such intriguing lore never really leaves our brain.( Just me?). After rattling around in my head for a few months, I could no longer ignore the idea and set out to make a Nephila fish net. It seemed like it should be easy enough. Nephila spiders, commonly known as banana spiders, live in Florida’s hardwoods in miserable plentitude and I already knew how to make twine. How hard could it be?

The next day I hiked down into “Hoggy Bottoms” (our name for the Hogtown Creek forest along 8th Avenue) where I gathered over 300 webs. Back home with my haul, I twisted and spun till my fingers ached and were caked with a tar-brown pitch that stuck to everything. When finished, I was the proud owner of an attractive (and strong), gold-colored cord. Unfortunately, it was only 2 feet long – hardly enough for a short hand-line, much less a fish net! My enthusiasm died and the cord was relegated to duty as a strap for my sunglasses – a duty it has served admirably ever since.

Several years passed before I learned that my net-making endeavor had been way off the mark. It turns out the natives simply bent the end of a long, thin branch and tied it back on itself to form a hoop – sort of a Flintstones tennis racket. This was then set out where a spider would make a web inside the hoop. For quicker results, they’d waft the hoop gently through an existing spider web like a slow motion tennis swing. A stronger net could be made by adding more webs. It was a great lesson, not so much because I could now fish with spider webs, but because I had learned that nothing brings out the “clever” in our species more than wanting fish for dinner.

High on that list are the Japanese fishermen who train cormorants to catch fish and deliver them to their handler. These birds go through an extensive training that starts at birth. Beginning with a leash and a ring around its neck to keep it from swallowing its catch, the bird eventually performs these tasks obediently, requiring nothing more than its thoroughly washed brain and an occasional fish of its own. Several species are used, all of them close relatives of our local “double-crested” cormorants. To my knowledge, our local species has never been ‘Shanghaied’ into the life of servitude. Oother local species haven’t been so lucky.


In the distant past, when superstition rested on the same shelf as science, ospreys were believed to have special oil in their feathers that stunned fish. Their feathers were sometimes collected and used as fishing aids. Later, falconers tried to train ospreys, but the ospreys would have none of it. Apparently, they were fine with the first part of the act – catching the fish - but never got the part where they were supposed to deliver it to the guy with the bewildered look on his face standing on shore. Instead, they flew to a nearby perch and snarfed the fish for themselves.

Closer to home, some of Florida’s aboriginal people had a few great tricks of their own. Perhaps the most interesting was remora fishing. Remoras are bizarre looking fish, whose dorsal fin has evolved into a powerful suction disc on top of their head. With this, they attach themselves to just about anything that passes, including fish, turtles, manatees and even the occasional boat. The practice of remora fishing, first noted by Columbus among the Arawak Indians, involved tying a cord around the fish’s tail and releasing it into the sea. Always eager for a free ride, the remora would latch on to the first thing that passed and the fishermen would then pull in the remora with its catch. Sea turtles were the main quarry, but fish and even an occasional manatee were also landed. The Arawaks held their remoras in high esteem and sang songs of praise to them. Australian aborigines, who also fished with remoras, were apparently more hungry than grateful - often eating their remoras at the end of the day.

On Florida’s inland waters, weirs and basket traps were sometimes used. Near the town of High Springs, beneath the cool, tannin-stained waters of the Santa Fe River, a line of eroded post holes in the limestone river bottom are the remains of an ancient fish weir. Spanning the width of the river, the line of posts formed a downstream pointing funnel which presumably had a wicker basket attached in the center to catch the fish. An interesting description of how such weirs were sometimes used in other parts of the country comes from an article written in 1902, by V.K. Chesnut.

In that account, California’s Pomo Indians stunned fish with mashed roots from the toxic soap plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum). The operation involved many people, sometimes from several neighboring villages, who took up stations along the river and dumped the root-poison into the river until the fish and eels went belly up. They were then grabbed or washed downstream into a weir. The Santa Fe weir may have been similarly used, since a number of local plants are known to have been used as fish poisons, including dogwood and smartweed.

Once, while paddling the Waccasassa River with my son Niklaus, we paused under the low canopy of a beautiful little red buckeye tree. As he palmed one of the tan, plum-sized fruits, I explained how local Indians ground them into a mash and put them in the stream to knock out fish. Needless to say, Niklaus spent the rest of the day, gathering and tossing buckeye seeds into the river as we made our way down stream. Fortunately, his 6-year-old attention span had missed the part about having to grind the seeds, so he became a veritable “Johnny Buckeye seed” who may one day be credited with planting a wondrous buckeye forest along the banks of the Waccasassa.

Bellamy Rd. and Charles Spring

7/20/08

It's a strange irony that we go to forests to escape civilization and yet the things we often find to be the most exciting are the traces of people who were there before us. And it doesn't take much. We stumble onto a deer trail and are mildly interested, but if that same trail has been worn deep by a thousand years of Indian foot traffic, we are fascinated. We wonder about the people who passed this way. Who were they? Where were they going? We visualize them running barefoot with news for a neighboring next village; skipping behind their parents; tip-toeing toward a deer seen crossing ahead; making long, determined strides toward a nearby town and waiting friends; strolling dejectedly from a village that had cast them out; limping with injuries from a recent battle; tripping over exposed roots. We wish we had seen them.

One ancient trail can be seen at Charles Spring. When early Indians chose follow an old deer trail leading to this spring, they could not have known they were pioneering a route that would eventually become one of the most important trails in the land. Today's history books refer to this road alternately (depending on the time period of that particular chapter) as the Old Spanish Road, the Mission Trail, and eventually as Florida's first Federal highway (in the original, pre-asphalt sense), Bellamy Road, which spanned the Florida Territory from St. Augustine to Tallahassee.

These days, there are few places where we can see this storied old trail. A section passing through O'leno State Park is one of the best. At Charles Spring, a vestigial section can be seen as a deep cut in the river bank leading down to the river. This served as a ramp for wagons to descend to the riverside and load onto a waiting ferry.

Nearby, an unassuming little trail enters the woods. A small green sign identifies it as the Old Bellamy Road. Following the overgrown trail into a plantation of young pines, we find ourselves, once again wondering about those who walked here before us. The trail ascends a sandy, wooded slope and we come to a small cemetery plot. We read the headstones of Rubin and Rebecca Charles who died in 1835 and 1849, and we wonder...


In addition to our paddle on the Suwannee, we have some great coastal trips this weekend at Cedar Key and Ozello (the Suncoast Keys. Here's the plan.

A Pair of Mounds - Hontoon Island and Turtle Mound

7/15/08

For centuries, Floridians have enjoyed the expansive views offered by large Indian mounds. In a state where the highest elevation is a 345 foot hill in the western panhandle, high ground has always held special importance. Before modern, multi-level structures were built, some of Florida's larger shell mounds were the highest features for hundreds of square miles.

The huge Turtle Mound, located a few miles south of New Smyrna, served dual purposes as both lookout point and landmark. Located on a narrow sliver of land (actually a long sand dune) separating the Atlantic Ocean from Mosquito Lagoon, this 70 foot heap of oyster shells, bone and pot shards provided local Indians and settlers a great vantage point from which to scan the horizon. Conversely, seafarers sailing along this level coastline, were all familiar with this distinctive, turtle-shaped landmark.

These days, Florida's Indian mounds are offering a new kind of view. As the highly concentrated and centralized repositories of food remains and artifacts, these refuse heaps are providing invaluable "views" into the lives of the people who made them. Through ongoing excavations, archaeologists are peeling back the layers of mystery surrounding these ancient people.

One limiting factor to studying these mounds is that most materials decay with time. It's usually only hard substances like shells, bones, cartilage, teeth and pottery that have survived. Softer items, such as those made of wood, flesh and plant material don't make it - usually. One rare exception is the large mound on Hontoon Island. Uniquely situated at the the edge of a backwater swamp, much of the mound material fell into the acidic, low-oxygen water where it was preserved. Through analysis of seeds and other perishable materials, researchers have identified 48 animal and 28 plant species that were used (mostly for food) by the people who lived here from about A.D. 1 well into 1700's.

This weekend, we'll be enjoying the views from both of these unique mounds. And, if you decide to take the short hike to the top of Turtle Mound, you might be able to enjoy the newest kind of view offered by this ancient lookout. In clear weather, with average binoculars, one can easily spot NASA's huge vehicle assembly building (which, by some accounts, houses the largest single "room" in the world) - a hopeful view of the future.