A Fortnight of ADVENTURE

Few things make me feel more complete than the sound of the junebugs in the afternoon and the frogs at night. Last night, I heard the frogs for the first time this year. This afternoon, I heard the junebugs. The hour of my land is upon me, and I could not be more excited. Sure, there's winter, but in the summer this place shines and dances in the thick heat of midday. That hot feeling your skin gets when you're in the sun - it recharges me. I am solar powered.

I've hit nigh 15 parks in the past few weekends. Most notable of them were Suwannee River, Big Shoals, and Washington Oaks Gardens State Parks. It may seem like I am packing as much as I can into one day just to get a stamp in my passport, but it's really the journey that I am after, the ADVENTURE into unknown lands and unseen forests. Sure, I get my stamp, but I also get a feast for the eyes and the soul.

Suwannee River State Park is everything you could ask for in a park. It's got your camping, hiking, scenic vistas, and a ridiculous array of completely unique natural features. Plus, it's at the end of a road, in the middle of glorious nowhere ("nowhere" is an affectionate term, I assure you). I'm still on the fence about opening my heart up to the Suwannee, as it seems shifty and odd compared to my close friend and relative, the St. Johns. It's got high, sandy bluffed banks, a swift current, and seems more like a river gone feral. Not that I have a problem with that, it's just that the St. Johns is like a big old friend that tells me what it's going to do before it does it, while the Suwannee is full of surprises. At SRSP, the trail walks along the banks of the river and occasionally comes upon a spring here and there. They just boil up from Florida's limestone innards, spilling themselves into the river without so much as a run to show off (like my darlings that mosey lazily to the St. Johns from their headsprings). 
With further hiking, you delve deeper into the forest. The rudimentary map I had of the trails left most of the sights up to my own interpretation - something that I prefer. I'm sure a park ranger could have helped me had I had a burning need to explore the facts and figures of the park's flora and geological features, but I had no need. I only needed to see and to drink it all in with my eyes. Palmettos are like good friends that wave as you pass by, and the little lilies that grow in the disturbed muddy areas look like they may sing if you wait long enough. I was blown away by the rapids and rock formations in the midpoint of the trail, the water heading in two separate directions and coming from nowhere, careening helter-skelter into the earth again. And the wet sunlight filtering through the spring canopy, and the singing lilies in the mud, and sound of rushing water - it's all so much of what I love and always coming close to being overwhelming but never really getting to that point. I'm sure I use the term "mind-blowing" a lot, but ma'ams and sirs, that vista is mind-blowing.

Speaking of neat-o vistas, Big Shoals is one of the weirdest things I've seen in Florida thus far (geologically speaking, although I've yet to visit the Florida caverns, so I'll get back to you on this). It's a modest park at the start, but walk a mile into the woods and you start hearing something, like a highway. Some kind of natural white noise. As you walk, it gets louder until you see the river through the trees doing something a Florida body of water ought not do: turn white. That's right, my dears, there's rapids in them there waters. It looks like the French Broad up in North Carolina (Florida's best friend and schoolmate from way back). It's like fast and excited sweet tea, all tannins and current. Unfortunately due to the nature of the shifty Suwannee, it's not terribly easy to get a great view of the shoals from the land. I'd like to one day visit it by boat, but it's too early in the relationship to go and do something like that. I mean, I have to get to know this river. And, you know, it's shifty. I have also heard that there are giant sturgeon that leap out of the Suwannee's waters and target unsuspecting boaters, and by my source's knowledge they kill one person a year. I'm not sure about those statistics, but I am also not taking a chance in a shifty river with giant prehistoric homicidal fish lurking in its depths.

Speaking of homicidal fish... no, not really. But wouldn't that just be the best segue ever?

The final park of note is less along the lines of mighty rivers and glorious Floridiana, Washington Oaks Gardens State Park is just plain neat. It's situated along A1A, down in that there scrub that so often becomes and uninteresting blur to me between two points on a map. So many beach parks are so similar, and I know I should enjoy and respect each for what they are, but sometimes I feel like IT'S JUST A BEACH. So when I say I "visited" the beachy state parks along A1A, I mean I saw what there was to see without partaking in trails or really getting out of my car. (Does it help that I have a convertible? It's like I was outside, only not!) Yes, yes, I feel lame for not inching through every nook and cranny like I do with the inland parks, but as I grew up near the sea, I've come to take it for granted and am therefore bored to bits with it. No offense, beaches of Northeast Florida, but I want to see other beaches.
Anyway, WOGSP is surprising. I mean, it doesn't look like scrub at all. In fact, it's a beautifully organized and well tended garden of roses, camellias, azaleas, and various other flora including some rather stately live oaks. There are water features,  lovely walking paths, and the fact that it's less than a mile from the uninterested Atlantic makes it all the more neat-o.

I visited many parks recently, but the three I've outlined are the ones that really stuck with me. Not that I am knocking the others I visited (Bulow Creek, Bulow Plantation Ruins, and Tomoka are three pretty incredible places as well for the massive Farchild Oak, well-preserved ruins, and a ridiculously gigantic 50s-era sculpture representing a "Timucuan folk tale", respectively).

The next issue of Flagogo will contain a spring. Which one? I don't know yet, but dammit, I'ma goin' swimmin'.


P.s The swallow-tailed kites are back!