No Wonder Audobon Shot 'Em

The thing about trying to photograph wildlife is that, mostly, they won't sit still. And many of the times when I'm trying to get shots of birds, I'm in a canoe which also won't sit still. Recently, on the St. Johns River, I was trying to get a photograph of a young Green heron. Finally, I got a halfway decent shot. But generally I missed getting good pictures of birds more often than I got a good hit.

First try...not good.

Damn! We drifted!

Crap! Boat moved!

Darn! Didn't get the color patterns!

This will have to do.
(The current took us out of sight.)

Old Trees and Forests, and No Human Whine

I like old trees. Frankly, I like old trees a lot better than I like people. When I'm in an old growth forest I generally know that I'm a good distance from crowds, and that pleases me. It pleases me a lot. Call me a misanthrope if you must; I really don't care.

Whenever my wife and I go on vacation, I'm always on the lookout for groves of old trees or exceptional individuals trees in what are called "remnant" or "relic" positions. The rest of their siblings were felled or paved under long ago, but these lone (or few) trees remain to let us know what we've lost.


On our latest vacation I knew that there were a few such trees in the neighborhood, and so we made plans to visit them. These were classic remnant trees. Just huge old giants surrounded by patches of young forest which, in turn, were surrounded by urban sprawl. The parks I visited in Florida were prime examples of Mankind, at long last, turning rural and wilderness lands into suburban parks. (And even urban parks.) Long gone are the forests which formerly stood. Gone even are the farmlands that, until the last few decades, lay as a kind of buffer for these individual trees against the onslaught of human waves.

Our first visit was to see a pair of trees in a place near Longwood Florida called, appropriately and bluntly, "Big Tree Park". The trees here are The Senator, considered to be the largest (and possibly oldest) living cypress tree. A few yards away from that tree stands "Lady Liberty", its companion. If there is a larger tree than The Senator on the east coast, I've yet to hear of it, and would much like to see it (if it exists). Until then, this one boggles the mind. I first saw it when my dad and his older brother took me to see it when I was a kid. Then, the tree was protected by a flimsy bit of chain link leaning against the trunk. I was able then to walk right up to it and touch the bark. Now, though, one is led to the tree via a long and very well-constructed boardwalk and the tree is behind a substantial steel fence. It's still an impressive sight.

The Senator (3,500 years old)

A few yards farther down the boardwalk is Lady Liberty, another remnant tree. I'm sure the lumber companies would have loved to have taken both of these down and sold the lumber for a tidy profit. But some folk got together and protected these bits of "Old Florida" and here they still stand, after 3,500 years (in the case of The Senator). Cypress trees grow very slowly, so it takes a very long time for them to achieve impressive stature, as trees go. But because they just keep on growing, given time, the cypress tree can reach truly phenomenal sizes. One of the rangers at Blue Springs State Park told me that there was a stump from a logged giant that was 31 feet in diameter. Such a tree! Gone forever, or until such time as Mankind can go away and leave Mother Nature alone.

Lady Liberty (Jove, I hate that name)

A couple of days later we visited De Leon Springs State Park some miles father north of Longwood. I'd heard that there was a big cypress tree in that park, also, and so I hiked to see it. Indeed, there is a nice old tree there. Called "Old Methusala", it's a mere 400-500 years old and, while impressive, is not nearly so huge as its fellows at Big Tree Park. Still and all, it's worth the short stroll into the woods to view this grand old cypress tree.

Old Methusala

After viewing the monster trees, I made many hikes into the woods and several float trips into the St. Johns River where I was able to view groves of various broadleaf and evergreen trees. None of them were particularly old or large, but given time, and a lack of molestation from my own species, they'll once more sport vast stands of trees like The Senator, Lady Liberty, and Old Methusala.

I hope our ancestors are around to see such a thing.

But I rather doubt it.

Waiting For You To Go

Close Encounters in a Blue Spring (State Park)

Okay.

Let me elaborate a bit on the chance meetings with several species of critter on this latest trip.

First, the raccoon. Yes, yes, the animal looks just adorable. But it was a most aggressive little opportunist. As soon as we arrived at our campsite, I set up the travel trailer and we began to unload. We put a cooler under the awning in front of the trailer door. We immediately noticed that the cooler top was open. Carole asked if I'd opened it. "Nope," I told her. "Then we have a thief in the campground." Sure enough, something had taken a packet of frozen hamburgers out of the top of the cooler. Four patties. Yes, we realized immediately that it must have been a raccoon. Maybe it was the hundreds of raccoon tracks in the sand? Hard to say.

Later, my wife noticed that one of her water shoes was missing. She'd taken them off at the door and one was gone. More raccoon tracks. Circumstantial evidence? Yes, but it seemed pretty solid.

Later that night we awaken to raccoons fighting in the brush beside the trailer. How rude!

The next day we make sure not to leave anything out that might tempt the raccoon, including shoes. Carole and I are lying in bed watching TV that evening when we hear something. Carole had not quite closed the door. We look to our left to see a little masked face peeking around the refrigerator at us. Carole screams bloody murder and the bandit retreats. But that's the last straw for Carole. The next morning she goes to the ranger and tells her about the aggressive asshole raccoon. The ranger asks me, and animal lover that I am, I still have to admit that this raccoon is a bit cheeky. The ranger decides that live traps should be set and the raccoon should be moved to a different part of the park.

Later that day Carole is at the grill preparing salmon fillets for our supper. She screams and I emerge from the trailer. With a broom. By now I know the drill. There the culprit is where it had begun to prepare to charge Carole again so that it could nab our supper. I sit on the edge of the picnic table and the raccoon and I face off. Me with the broom, the raccoon with its sharp little teeth and lots of patience. I try to scare it off, but it always returns. When the fish is cooked, we retreat to our trailer to eat supper. Door secured, of course.

Next morning we check the traps the ranger set. One is empty and the other contains a puzzled opossum. Innocent bystander. The ranger comes and releases the poor possum. She then baits the trap with hot dogs. And as soon as she leaves, a beautiful scrub jay arrives, enters the trap, and methodically nabs every scrap of hot dog. So there, you stupid humans!

When we leave, the traps are still empty. The raccoon is still free.

On our last full day in the park, we were swimming in the Blue Spring Run. It's the short river formed by the sudden explosion of several million gallons of pure water per day from the headspring. We knew it is a great place to view manatees in the winter, but by May most of them have gone out into the St. Johns River. However, as we are enjoying the water on our final day in the park, what should swim up to us but a pair of young manatees! These were only two years old, recently rehabilitated orphans released from Sea World into the Blue Springs environs and still sporting radio transmitters on their tails.

The manatees are very friendly and gentle and swam right up to us. We managed to touch them, quite by accident, later learning that you're not supposed to touch them. At any rate, it was the manatees doing the curious contact. I've never been in the water with such creatures, and it was a true delight. I'd always heard that they were completely sluggish and slow moving at all times. Not so. After a while, the two animals decided to head to the main headspring and took off like a pair of rockets. No way even a strong swimmer could have kept up with them.

One morning I walked down to the bath to take a shower. In the stall (sans eyeglasses, of course) I note a leaf or something on my ankle and casually reach down with the washrag to remove it. I continue to lather my arms and only vaguely recall to open the rag and see what I had swabbed off from my foot. It was not a leaf.

It was a scorpion.

Normally, I have sympathy for even the creepy crawliest of animals. However, I draw the line at scorpions. This creature I carefully placed on the floor of the shower stall and bashed into oblivion with a container of shampoo. In my time I've been stung on about half a dozen occasions by common scorpions. It's not fatal, but it hurts! I wasn't going to give this one another chance at stinging me. Even I have my limitations.

All in all, a series of impressive encounters with some of the living things with whom we share the Earth.

Back Home

We've returned from our latest vacation. I pretty much live for these wonderful breaks in the monotony of labor. Carole and I have been lucky enough to pick some great vacation spots the past few years. One thing we enjoy doing is seeking out the freshwater springs in Florida to explore.

As usual, we enjoyed seeing the wild critters who inhabit these places. This time, however, we interacted with some of them a bit more than usual. We had a particularly stubborn raccoon at our campsite. This one managed to steal our hamburgers while our backs were turned, one of Carole's water shoes (why it wanted that, we haven't a clue), and I had to stand guard with a broom while Carole grilled salmon fillet so that the raccoon couldn't chase her away from the fish.

We reluctantly notified the rangers who set out traps. And that's a story unto itself. First, the traps succeeded in capturing only an innocent opposum, and later a scrub jay arrived to steal all of the bait out of the traps. Raccoon had three wins and a draw. And I had to carry a big stick to get the draw.

Cute? Not really. A very aggressive critter. I suspect it was a pregnant female in need of many calories. I had to stand guard with a broomstick while my wife cooked on the outside grill.

Still on Vacation!

We're still on vacation, hitting the various first magnitude springs here in Central Florida. Visiting other amazing places, too.

More when we return in a few days.

Blogging from a remote McDonald's restaurant! With WiFi! Damn!

Taking it easy in DeLeon Springs.

The Senator, world's largest cypress tree. Yep, that's me standing slightly behind it. (If there's a larger tree on the east coast, I've never heard of it.)

Vacation!

Jove bless my government job.

Tomorrow I leave for ten days of vacation. My wife and I are planning to swim, snorkel, and canoe a number of first magnitude springs in central Florida.

Stupid, Stupid Kid!

Why don’t more male children die horribly?

I wonder this all of the damned time. Because I was a male child and, meek as I was, I did the most amazingly insane and risky crap that I marvel that I lived to the age of 30 when I began to calm down. A bit.

I think back on some of the milder stupid things that I did. Once, age of eight, a pal and I wandered very far from my Decatur GA neighborhood. We stumbled across a road cut sliced into solid Stone Mountain granite. Sheer wall. Of course walls are for climbing. So up we went. My pal chickened out, but I kept going. Up. After forty or so vertical feet I was clinging to the perpendicular and wondering what in the hell I was doing up there. I was afraid to move. It was, quite literally, almost straight down to the sidewalk, and I was hugging that granite wall for all I was worth. I was far too scared to try down climbing, so up I went. I made it to the top. How? Hell if I know.

I’ve since revisited that road cut. You can see it from a major thoroughfare in Decatur. It’s about as high as my eight-year-old mind recalled it.

I’ve almost drowned at least twice. Once while trying to swim across a pool when I was already really, really tired. One of my pals, seeing me swallowing water and screaming, jumped in and tried to help me. I savaged his stupid ass. I basically used his head to stand up on. Only the intervention of the lifeguard saved us both.

That was when I was eight. I think the age of eight was my single most dangerous year. Another friend challenged me to bike race down a huge grassy hill not far from where we lived. He went first, and I followed right behind him. On reaching the bottom of the hill, we realized that what we had thought was a bridge over a steep gully was, in fact, merely a four-inch water pipe with some grass growing over it. Somehow, we both managed to guide our speeding bikes over the top of this extremely narrow pipe and not go flying into the deep, debris-filled gully at about 25mph on our Stingray bikes. On the far side, both of us looked back, and, even dumb as we were, realized we’d dodged some kind of bullet.

Later, there I was in the next city down the line in my father’s endless quest to fuck up his life. I was older and should have known better, but I was messing around in the back yard of an abandoned house that was adjacent to our own place. There was a huge pile of wood and grass in the middle of the yard, placed there years before by someone, and left to rot, as if someone was in the middle of some major cleaning up and just said, "Screw this. I'm leaving". Looking to see what plunder might be in that trashy heap I found a rusting tin can partially filled with some fluid. I sniffed at the tiny puncture in the top of the can: paint thinner? I wasn’t sure, but it smelled flammable. Therefore, I began to squirt the fluid onto the ground, forming a thin line about ten feet long. Then I took a match out of my pocket (I’m not sure what I was doing with a box of matches…but there you are) and lit the line of what-might-have-been-paint-thinner. The flame did exactly as I’d imagined it would and followed the pencil-thin avenue right up to the rusting can of highly flammable liquid.

For just a second: nothing. And then, with a terrific WHOOSH it went up. A blue-white flame exploded from what had become, in effect, a rocket nozzle. The can slammed against the pile of wet, rotting debris, but it did not explode. Instead, it just sat in place and acted as if it were something built by Robert fucking Goddard. I thought it was the coolest goddamned thing I had ever, ever, ever seen.

It did not blow up and I did not die. In fact, the can continued to act like a stuck rocket engine until the fuel was expended. I even waited around and watched as the can cooled and suddenly imploded. What a physics experiment! I felt like a demented Werner von Braun.

I was lucky on many other occasions. Later.

Corporate Takeover

AUGH!

One of my favorite websites is no more! It was called Topozone.com. From there you could type in a place name and do a search and quickly have a decent topo map of the area in question, along with latitude and longitude facts. I would go there frequently to do research for upcoming hikes and other destinations.

Alas!

Topozone.com was bought up, in whole, by a pernicious outfit called Trails.com! It's now part of a pay-only site and the features are forever lost to those of us who once used it easily when it made its money from advertising.

Oh, well and so it goes.

Fuck Corporate America.