Ten years ago or so a friend and I decided to go on a 63 mile hike down the Suwannee River… We packed our gear and hitched a ride to a place in the river called Big Sholes, North East of White Springs Florida… I tried to make my pack as light as possible, just a few canteens of water along with a conversion kit so we could drink out of the river, matches, a little bit of light weight food like, breakfast bars, a raincoat because it was the dead of winter and staying dry could mean not getting hyperthermia. I also carried a hatchet and Swiss Army Knife… One thing I didn’t bring was a tent… I knew it would add a lot of weight to my pack… I gambled on not encountering rain in the middle of winter but that was a gamble I would soon regret…
We were dropped in what looked like the middle of nowhere. But there was a calm that quickly seemed to drape over us; lay softly on our shoulders reassuring us that we were in a far better place than the busy streets of the city. We had no cell phones, no reminders of the outside world except for the occasional jet plane dividing the baby blue skyline… It’s smoky trails streaking the horizon. Like stick clouds of cotton they hug, then slowly drifted away…
Making camp down by the river the second night I realize we were not alone… It was dusk and would be dark soon. I made a quick lean-to out of driftwood and palm fronds. Then worked on making fire. The fire was soothing to my cold hands and the soft sand was as good as any bed I had laid in before, at least it felt that way to me after a day of nonstop walking.
Sometime during the night I woke to the sound of something close by. I shined my light and scanned the river bank. I couldn’t see what was making the noise but I did see what seemed like a thousand eyes staring back at me… It was hundreds of spiders… I had never seen something so amazing. Their crystal like eyes glowed like diamonds in my flashlight’s beam… I clicked my light off and hoped they had somewhere else to be than crawling on me in my sleep…
The next morning I saw what was making the sound. There were raccoon tracks on each side of me in the white sugar sand where the animal had made its way down to the river to drink. And that’s exactly where I was going to do the same… The river’s water was stained from the Thick Bottom Cypress that grows on the edge of its water… Their gnarly roots pierce the water’s surface like dull daggers. Holding the water up to the light it kinda resembled 3 week old tea, but it was treated and down the hatch it went. Bitter but good…
Just on the other side of White Springs, I saw a man near the trailhead much lager than me… He was well over six feet tall and built with tick ripped muscles… He wore a white robe and his bearded face was dirty and pulled tightly with expressions of hardships… His eyes wore a rugged stare. On his shoulder was an aluminum cross, plenty large enough to crucify a grown man on… He was dragging it step by agonizing step… The cross’s exterior was dressed with writing from top to bottom. Scriptures from the bible written with the utmost conviction… We kept walking and so did he…
Long after the burning sun had fallen from the sky, and the bats had awoke for the night we walked into the Spirit of The Suwannee Campgrounds. Getting a campsite we collapsed down on the edge of a lake. We shared a cold can of spaghetti then slept on the ground. We were to tired to set up a tent or make anything in the way of shelter. About five in the morning I woke to the sky opening up and cold raindrops stinging my skin. We grabbed our packs and made our way to an overhang. After the rain had cleared my friend said he was pretty sure he was running a fever. At that point we were roughly 26 miles from his truck and an extra tent. We knew if we rented a canoe we could make it to the truck by sundown… We could then drive to the nearest town for medicine to stop his fever.
Walking up to the canoe outpost our faces dropped when we saw the sign that said the post was closed for the month of January… We sat on the porch out of the rain and thought of what to do next. Suddenly an old truck pulled up in front of us. A man with a rough looking exterior stepped from the cab… A P-38 can opener, ( also known as a John Wayne ), hung from his neck. His skin was spotted brown from years working as a river guide. He was one of the owners and was nice enough to rent an old canoe to us if we promised to bring it back. We happily said we would, and off we went down stream in the drizzling winter rain. 6 hours and 26 miles later we rolled into Suwannee River State Park…
After setting up camp and realizing we had not seen a warm meal in 8 days or so we made our way into town. We grabbed the necessary medicine to stop my friend’s fever then drove over to the local pizza joint. As the waitress took our order a woman, with eyes wide and combing over us with pity walked over and handed us a coupon… “You boys need this more than us… Please take it.” We thanked her and I instantly thought, she thinks we’re homeless. I guess we looked it. We hadn’t had a bath in a week or so and we had been sleeping on the wet ground.
After what had to be the best pizza on the planet we made our way back to camp. The extra tent my friend had in his truck leaked badly. I had to put on my rain jacket and sleep on a lawn char inside it to stay off the 2 inches of water that was on the tent’s bottom. I wasn’t complaining because it was 30 degrees outside that night, and a leaky tent is a whole lot better than no tent…
As I laid there watching the rain drip in on me, I thought back to all the sights of the trail. The endless sky’s reflection in the flowing dark water of the river… Hawks screaming overhead, assuring us we had not gone unnoticed by nature’s watchful eye. Hundred year old clay catch pots from an old turpentine harvest, Confederate trenches still dugout and scaring the hillside, and deer running in abundance through the scrub forest and lower flat bottom.
I finally drifted to sleep knowing now there was still the possibility of living free. Far from the constant rush of society in this thick North Florida Landscape, with its shadowy river called The Suwannee…
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