Tip of St. Vincent Island

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That's 'Tip', as in 'tip of the iceberg'.  In two short days that's all one can possibly see of this big diverse wildlife refuge (especially since you can't camp there). The island is an easy paddle by kayak across Indian Pass, and there's a day ferry there as well.  Susan Cerulean is writing a book about this part of Florida, so Crystal and I joined her and Jeff for a couple days visit to IP and St. V. last month.

I had noticed the Railroad Vine with its Beach Morning Glory flowers right away, so I was out crawling in the sand setting up the photo (above) well before sunrise the next morning.  I hadn't realized that the flowers would be still furled asleep until mid-morning, but decided they still made good (if not better) subjects when curled up.  That's St. Vincent Island in the upper right.

May means the shorebirds are in full breeding plumage - much more showy than most of the year.  I saw (or noticed) my first Red Knot - a red-breasted sandpiper.  The little Sanderling boys dominated with their battling and posturing all up and down the beaches.  We saw many other sandpipers, egrets, herons, oystercatchers, terns and gulls, eagles and osprey... and the list goes on.  

Least Terns were nesting on a remote beach gulfside of St. Vincent.  We watched the guys bring minnow-gifts to their coy sweethearts.   And the females fiercely defending their nests from potential predators like ghost crabs.

 We passed another spit covered with Black Skimmers, presumably many on their nests.  As we were leaving, an eagle soared over sending the flock into synchronized flight.

One long walk on St. V lasted through a magnificent sunset which shone orange light across the sand.  I had carried only one large telephoto lens in my little kayak, so all my photo subjects that evening had to be small (like a bird) or a detail from a distance (like wolf tracks).  It was an interesting exercise (and repeated reminder to come prepared.)

A massive storm front was moving in fast on our final morning giving us a dark-brooding-sky sendoff.

Life at Dead Lakes

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"Surreal", I thought as we idled out into Dead Lakes from the ramp.  Hulking sculpted tree bases filled and lined the lake.  Stumps rose up to 15 feet above water while others hid treacherously just below the surface.  The lake is the result of backed up water in the final 10 miles of the Chipola River when the Apalachicola River is high.  The Chipola ends at the mighty Apalachicola.  But there is more to the story - a dam that was built in the 1960s and then removed in the 1980s.  Many trees were killed by the massive flooding, hence the name, but why it's plural I don't know.

Crystal, Sue, Jeff and I slowly weaved through the skeletal trees in search of shade and a swimming hole.  The day (yesterday) was a hot one which gave me opportunity to try out my experimental bimini-top shade extender over the bow deck of the jonboat.  Pieced together from Tyvek housewrap and electrical conduit pipe, it proved to be a lifesaver (well, at least skinsaver).

We explored northward from Wewahitchka.  Pretty soon we got used to the eery landscape and started noticing the abundant life in the Dead Lakes.  The lake was full of fish and birds, and probably gators, though we saw none.  And from the thousands of stumps, young cypress trees and other plants had sprung up.  Islands have formed.  We even found a sandy-ish beach where we picnicked and had a swim.  The water was around 85 degrees fahrenheit - Coldwater-Phobic-Jeff declared it perfect!

By hanging out in that spot, nature returned to her rhythms and the wildlife resumed its activities.  A pair of grackles repeatedly flew from their cavity nest carrying their nestling's fecal pellets out over the lake and dropping them.  An osprey dipped and weaved past us with several grackles in hot pursuit.  As one of the blackbirds pecked the raptor, the osprey dropped what had to be a baby grackle it had stolen from a nest.

Prothonotary warblers called all around us.  We saw two males fighting.  Later, one male came to the tree over our boat and proceeded to gather insects for his nestlings.  His beak was stuffed by the time he headed home.  Turtles sunned and plopped off logs, and all sorts of herons and egrets fished, flew, and posed for us.

Banks of clouds grew in the sky on this hot summer day, reflecting on the windless water surface... and life was good.

Moonrise-Sunset at St. Marks

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April 17 the full moon was scheduled to rise at the same time the sun was to set.  I drove to St. Marks on a clear-sky evening... well, except for the no-see-ums and skeeters - they were thick in the air.

Armed with a new compass and info I'd researched online, I set out to predict exactly where the moon would break over the horizon.  One of my beloved sculpted snags would serve as my global line-of-sight.  Wow, was I impressed when the moon came up in exactly the right spot!  This could be a powerful tool for future photos.

I was there early enough to need distractions from the biting bugs.  Here is another snag catching the last rays of the sun.  (The weird background colors just happened that way.)

Behind me, the sun was creating a fiery horizon behind the pines.

And just before moonrise, a pair of grackles posed briefly on the perch on which I has my lens focused - making easy my favorite shot-of-the-evening (above).  The moon popped faintly into view a couple minutes after the birds left, and rose into the bowl of the snag.

As the light fell, I made a few more images, including one with another grackle... and then packed up for home.  But as I was driving out, a silhouette scene in the western Afterglow stopped me.  What a beautiful place in which I live and love!

Pictorial Ode to an Old Friend

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Visited this venerable pine along the Florida Trail many times over the years. The tree was massive and exuded presence. Saw the tree last week and it had died. A recent burn decorated the trunk. It still commanded plenty of beauty and awe. I felt grateful to have known the tail end of the tree's long life.

Devon Creek Canopy

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Arching over our heads from both sides, cypress and tupelo create a gorgeous canopy as we paddle up Devon Creek.  Author, photographer, and friend, Doug Alderson remembered this little creek -- off of Owl Creek off of the Apalachicola River -- from a visit here 30 years ago.  Doug is the Florida Paddling Trails coordinator for the Office of Greenways and Trails -- namely, he is probably Florida's chief paddling trailblazer.

 We launch on this exploratory paddle to find out whether this might be a destination for other paddlers or not.... and WOW, is it ever!  At the high water level this evening, the mouth of the creek is obscured by tree branches, but research had lent some GPS coordinates, so we plunge into the floodplain and soon find the channel.  The amazing canopy, winding path, and mirrored water surface lead us through a spectacular tunnel of green light on a circular skeleton of dark limbs.

Birds of the swamp -- dominated by the bright yellow Prothonotary Warbler calling "Sweet...sweet...sweet" -- escort us.  Turtles and frogs perch on low branches.  Tupelo "knees" form hoops instead of being pointy like cypress knees.  This one pair of tupelo knees appears to have "tied the knot".

 Cypress trees are always great subjects, offering such unique sculpted shapes.  Below are three photos of cypress. The first, solid and healthy, near the one spot we are able to stop on dry land.

The next, a fan of splintered wood reaching for the sky.

Third is Doug's photo called "Cypress Angel".  He sees this contorted living tree twisting up, over and down again, wrapping around itself.  At it's ragged tip is one healthy branch feathering its bright green needles around the tree's waist.  Despite the challenges of the busy elements of swamp and dappled sunlight, he captures the Angel in the tree.  Well done, Doug!

Finally, on our way back to our put-in, the sun dropping rapidly toward the horizon, an arch of trees along Owl Creek captures a burst of magic light on the far shore.  One final photo and the adventure ends in perfection.

Wakulla County Slave Canal

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The story goes that slaves were made to dig a small canal connecting Alligator Lake to Otter Lake through a series of sinkholes and ponds in an attempt to drain Alligator Lake for planting cotton.  Like the draining of the Everglades, the Alligator Lake scheme failed, but the remnants of the canal are still there, now traversing part of the Panacea unit of St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.  My friend, Bob Thompson, knows these woods well and took me along on one of his favorite hikes - the canal - earlier this week. 

Our first stop was a Live Oak Boneyard, an oddly-clear area in the woods, except for a standing trunk and old "bones" of the long-dead live oak tree. The place felt of ancient reverence. A quarter mile away, we stopped again to admire two old tree trunks, mysteriously aligned, with their root-butts facing each other.  Too heavy to have been moved by hands, and no evidence of having grown in this spot, how and why did this pair come to lie here like this for so many decades?

More evidence of man's habitation in these woods, we found two catfaces along the canal-bed. "Catface" is the name given to the scarred base of a pine tree after turpentiners had been draining the tree's sap for years.  One was a totem-like standing stump of hard resinous lighterwood.  The other had fallen, but still had its metal funnels and sculpted face.

These are dry times, so we were hiking in swamps that could be more than 5 feet underwater in wet times.  Beautiful cypress and black gums rose from the leaf-laden swamp floor.  The black gums all seemed to be hollow with hobbit-like doorways.  I marvelled at their eerie dancing legs.

We experienced snake camo first hand when Bob nearly grabbed a stick next to a neatly coiled diamondback.  If you are not snake-phobic, be sure to click on the thumbnail here so you can better see the intricate beauty in the pattern of the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake.  Later we spotted a gray rat snake stretched out along a gray log, invisible to the hawk or owl that might make a meal of it.

The canal itself was a marvel that stretched through miles of forest and swamp, sand and mud, roots and rocks.  This was the results years of monumentally hard labor. Nature has largely reclaimed the canal, so that now it is just a monumental trail engraved in the forest floor, offering a beautiful walk through history and nature.