And this is just the preview Michelle Thatcher's still in production film of her solo kayak trip along the St. Johns River!
The beginning makes me cry. There is so much joy in me when I'm loading my kayak in the "early half-dream of dawn."
The photo credits go to Lee and Taylor Savage. These babies live under their house. This is sort of related to writing. The poet Renee Ashley fell in love with the armadillos that snuffled around our lodgings at Atlantic Center for the Arts. This post is for her.
Wander your kayak around mangrove islets. Watch for crabs skittering along prop roots. Surprise a burst of night herons. Be ignored by an eagle. Push against a rising afternoon wind to reach home.
And in the middle of the post-kayak eating of shrimp and crab (caught in the same Gulf waters you just left) you will know what is important and how to begin.
"My fingers press into clay. I balance at the edge of my mind. The excitement rises and wants to spill into bright colors and glare. It whispers out of my bones and demands that I continue. It says that I will not fail, that I know enough, everything."
The Ochlockonee River State Park camping trip was grand. I have a first revision (except for this pesky little bit I need to write set in 1704) done. It's actual fun to go through it all with a whole book perspective - with a wide, unobstructed view. Which segues quite neatly into Mobi Mats.
I don't think I've ever blogged/ranted about my aversion to these boardwalks they're building at State Parks. They get all this money, spend all this time, have good intentions, and then build "accessible" boardwalks with railings so high that I feel like a steer in a slaughter house chute or that I'm in some 1700's jail and should have a tin cup to bang against the wooden slats. I don't think you get to call it "accessible" if I can't use my binoculars, take a photo, or lean my elbows (or at least my chin) on the top, stare into the vista, and ponder the meaning of life.
Well, at Bald Point State Park, in addition to the mean jokes of boardwalks that other parks have, they have Mobi Mats. I found it stretched out over the sand. No one was around. I thought "what the heck, my phone has bars, and took off. I ended up at this lagoon. I pondered the meaning of life.
Here at home, online again, I looked up the Mobi Mat website. This technology is brought to us by Deschamps the "world leader in tactical mobility since 1860." Check out the promotional photos of tanks rolling over sand, helicopters landing in sand, troops disembarking in sand. Yikes. The park volunteer said that one strip of Mobi Mat cost $27,000.
Hey All,
Tomorrow I'm finding my way over the flooded Suwannee River to the Ochlockonee River State Park. For ten days, I'll be living in my van, parked between a bay and a pine flats chock full of wildflowers. I've packed my six pillows, printer, extra ink, binoculars, computer, protein powder, two bags of books, camera, and only four sets of earrings. I'm ready.
My goals include revising this next chapter all the way through, writing up an application for a residency, visiting with a writer friend and her partner, and searching out sarracenias (pitcher plants).
It is unlikely that I'll be on the Internet until I return. Here's the link to the eaglets. Please check on them for me while I'm gone.
Are you tired of ruining another little piece of Florida with a drug-addicted, water-wasting yard? Come to the Native Plant Sale this Saturday, April 11 from 8:30am until 12:30pm here in Gainesville at the Morningside Nature Center. But if you want to be one of the cool kids, then come on Friday from 4:30pm to 6:30pm, join up, and shop the members night. I'll be there cashiering. Some vendors sell right out on Friday. Every image on this post is a native plant that grows in my yard. Butterflies, reptiles, and birds abound, and I have not watered or fertilized, or really done anything at all to the plants but throw dirt around - and admire them.
The three eggs in this nest (in New Jersey) are due to hatch starting on April 4. That's tomorrow!
The state government is considering a "cost saving" proposal that will close many of our State Parks. This is wrong headed in so many ways and Sandra Friend, author and environmental protector, has set up a website that says why. She asks us to write letters and e-mails and provides talking points and links to the appropriate e-mail addresses.
Here's the letter that I sent to Governor Crist, DEP Secretary Sole, and Florida State Parks Director Bullock:
"Please reconsider the proposal to close state parks as a "cost saving" measure. There are many reason why I oppose any closures - the economic benefit of them to their surrounding communities, the value of the volunteer hours that will be lost, and that in these stressful financial times they are an inexpensive place for families to relax and have fun. More personally, is that for the most part, they are wheelchair accessible which makes it possible for me to be part of the wildness of the "Real Florida."
The biggest heartbreak, for me, would be the closure of Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. Large preserves such as this are invaluable to our State. They don't bring in the public as much as more recreational places, and they shouldn't. They exist to protect an environment. My visits there have expanded my idea of what Florida is and was. The Preserve sent me back to my home more committed to volunteering for our amazing system of state parks and searching out ways to leave less of an environmental imprint in my daily life.
I am a writer living on a fixed income. Most writing retreats and classes are out of reach for me. But each year I look forward to my days camping at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. I wake up to turkeys and deer wandering through my campsite. I stroll the paths listening to meadowlarks and looking for the orange flash of pine lily in the tall grass. I come back to my quiet site and write in a deep way that would be impossible anywhere else.
You may have a policy against opening them, but I've attached two photographs that I took at the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve."
Native Plant Sale - At the Morningside Nature Center, from 8:30 until noon, Saturday, October 4. (And tonight from 4:30 to 6:30 for members.)
Twice a year I cashier at the sale here in Gainesville. (Making change out of a cash box is a dying art, but I was a retailer pre-fancy cash registers.) Let me tell you, it's a wild place full of rabid gardeners. The cars leave with plants hanging out the sides, filling windshields from the passenger seat, and tucked in on every floor surface.
Each time I get handed a pile of twenties and give back a bit of change I see the local economy meshing with the local environment. These plants won't need fertilizer or pesticides and not much water if they're planted in the right places. And the money goes to nurseries that will now cultivate even more native plants and next spring we'll have another plant sale and more dotted horsemint, firebush, viburnums, anise, woodland sunflowers, and bluecurls will replace all the imported, drug dependent plants.
Wherever you live, find out about the native plants in your area.
Flamingo Campground, the Everglades, over a decade ago - I was perched beside the wooden benches overlooking the Florida Bay and waiting for the evening naturalist program to begin. A tall ranger strode up through the crowd, tapped the microphone, and said his talk was going to be on Florida's water. The first slide was a map of mish mashed lines, and I thought "this is going to be boring." But I already had a nice layer of mosquito repellent applied, so I stayed. Well. Even his government-issued, try-not-to-piss-off-too-many-people version was like an espionage novel. It had intrigue at the highest political levels, evil corporations, unrelenting natural forces, violence , and all sorts of Byzantine machinations.
Tonight Florida's Eden hosted an event to "Celebrate our Springs, Floridan Aquifer, and the Water Which Defines Us." They brought together forty artists, a jazz band, good food, and Cynthia Barnett, the author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern US. I've only just started on it (sinkholes!) and, like that long-ago ranger lecture, it is the opposite of boring.
P.S. Also, there was a painting of the view looking up from under the spring water to the sky that is exactly a scene I was trying to write earlier today. Is it plagiarism if I take that image and put it in my character's eyes?
Sometimes it's searching the web, sometimes it's flicking through microfiche reels, but sometimes this novel's research means returning to its geographic setting - the Silver River.
My kayak friend and I were launched by 7:30 and had the river to ourselves. A batch of baby alligators and their mama curled over downed branches, ibis waited on the top of the tallest dead tree for the first sunlight, and in a sandy cove, naked lesbians squealed as they dropped into the cold spring water.
And I did do research. I consulted with my kayak friend and the overhanging branches on how to describe the smell of cypress. I found out exactly how far you have to go into the trees before the mosquitoes gather. And, finally, I figured out a simile for how the air is on those mornings in the summer when even before dawn the humidity is hardcore.
Afterwards, there was barbeque. Yum.
