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April 3, 2007
The Nature of Things
Everglades Trip Always One to Remember
By Tom Palmer
tom.palmer@theledger.com
The Everglades is often in the news, but for many people it seems a faraway place.
During the past two weeks, a team of hikers and kayakers has been trying to help people in Central Florida connect the dots.
The event, dubbed "Expedition Headwaters: An Everglades Journey to Remember,'' involved a 12-day, 140-mile journey from Rosen Shingle Creek Resort near Orlando to the mouth of the Kissimmee River at Lake Okeechobee. The expedition ends today.
Lake Okeechobee's influence on the Everglades is well-known, but the connection to a series of creeks and lakes from as far north as Orlando and as far east as Haines City that feed the Kissimmee River is less obvious to many people.
In many places the connections are natural streams and at other places the once-natural flow is now a system of locks, dikes and canals intersected by highways, subdivisions and shopping centers.
I joined the group Thursday for a 15-mile hike from the former Shady Oaks fish camp on Lake Kissimmee to the former settlement of Kicco.
Beth Kelso from the Florida Trail Association, a statewide hiking group, was leading that leg of the overland expedition.
She's from Naples and in some ways was the personification of the lack of knowledge people in one part of the state have of other parts.
Beth knew the Everglades because it's not far from where she lives now and where she grew up in Fort Lauderdale.
But she said traveling through the Everglades headwaters was a revelation to her.
She talked about seeing bald eagles, lots of bald eagles.
That's not a surprise to those of us who live here.
I see bald eagles pretty regularly because this area has the highest concentration of these regal birds in the lower 48 states.
Beth was also surprised that it was possible to travel on foot and by water for days through beautiful open land.
During the trip, Beth said she saw her first sandhill cranes.
They're common at this end of the Everglades, but apparently scarce at the other end.
She saw caracaras, birds of prey that are much rarer than bald eagles or sandhill cranes, but she said she had seen them somewhere before.
A couple of days before that she had walked through a field somewhere that was full of all kinds of colorful wildflowers.
She said the trek had morphed into more than a tour through the Everglades headwaters and become a quest to find a place where she could direct the people who come this way next for scenic hikes, camping trips and other expeditions of their own.
"My mission is to tell people about the beauty,'' she explained.
She had begun to sound like someone from the local tourism office, urging people to look beyond Disney and take a short trip to savor the trails on land or water, the landscape and the wildlife that makes the rural area along the Kissimmee River Valley a memorable outdoors experience.
Beth was definitely in the return customer column on the tourism ledger sheet.
If there were complaints, they were that this section of the Florida Trail didn't wind through enough wooded areas and that the incessant airboat noise eliminated any possibility of enjoying a quiet evening listening to frogs and crickets or that a Lake Kissimmee fish camp called Thomas Landing turned out to be a bad choice to spend the night.
During Thursday's hike, the lack of shade was the biggest issue.
For a time we were in and out of the canopy, but mostly out.
We crossed a bridge over a waterway called Ice Cream Slough. What a tantalizing name on a hot day.
We found a place to stop for lunch that featured a live oak with a horizontal trunk suitable for settling in for a short break.
Whenever I stop in an oak hammock, I'm always amazed at the diversity of the sizes and forms of the oak trunks, each shaped by time, weather and gravity.
The area along Canal 38, the engineers' name for the ditched Kissimmee River, appears like a bumpy, treeless shell airstrip.
The shell was in the ancient sediment hauled from below the natural river's bottom and piled haphazardly along the edge.
Some tree plantings in this expanse would have made the journey more pleasant.
As we were thinking of trees, we saw a marker indicating the trail was turning into an oak-palmetto hammock. The shade was welcome. It had been a long, hot walk.
We passed by a dry, fern-filled ditch, meandered among palmettos and ducked under low-hanging oak limbs, but finally reached a hammock with picnic tables and tents.
I accepted an offer of a bottle of chilled water and rested a few moments before bidding my companions goodbye and catching a ride back to my truck.
Like Beth Kelso, I'm sure I'll visit again.
******************************************
Background post: http://www.southernairboat.com/phpBB2/v ... ght=#52909
Will anyone write this gentleman and newspaper a note explaining why there is so much wildlife & who fought to keep the area nice?
April 3, 2007
The Nature of Things
Everglades Trip Always One to Remember
By Tom Palmer
tom.palmer@theledger.com
The Everglades is often in the news, but for many people it seems a faraway place.
During the past two weeks, a team of hikers and kayakers has been trying to help people in Central Florida connect the dots.
The event, dubbed "Expedition Headwaters: An Everglades Journey to Remember,'' involved a 12-day, 140-mile journey from Rosen Shingle Creek Resort near Orlando to the mouth of the Kissimmee River at Lake Okeechobee. The expedition ends today.
Lake Okeechobee's influence on the Everglades is well-known, but the connection to a series of creeks and lakes from as far north as Orlando and as far east as Haines City that feed the Kissimmee River is less obvious to many people.
In many places the connections are natural streams and at other places the once-natural flow is now a system of locks, dikes and canals intersected by highways, subdivisions and shopping centers.
I joined the group Thursday for a 15-mile hike from the former Shady Oaks fish camp on Lake Kissimmee to the former settlement of Kicco.
Beth Kelso from the Florida Trail Association, a statewide hiking group, was leading that leg of the overland expedition.
She's from Naples and in some ways was the personification of the lack of knowledge people in one part of the state have of other parts.
Beth knew the Everglades because it's not far from where she lives now and where she grew up in Fort Lauderdale.
But she said traveling through the Everglades headwaters was a revelation to her.
She talked about seeing bald eagles, lots of bald eagles.
That's not a surprise to those of us who live here.
I see bald eagles pretty regularly because this area has the highest concentration of these regal birds in the lower 48 states.
Beth was also surprised that it was possible to travel on foot and by water for days through beautiful open land.
During the trip, Beth said she saw her first sandhill cranes.
They're common at this end of the Everglades, but apparently scarce at the other end.
She saw caracaras, birds of prey that are much rarer than bald eagles or sandhill cranes, but she said she had seen them somewhere before.
A couple of days before that she had walked through a field somewhere that was full of all kinds of colorful wildflowers.
She said the trek had morphed into more than a tour through the Everglades headwaters and become a quest to find a place where she could direct the people who come this way next for scenic hikes, camping trips and other expeditions of their own.
"My mission is to tell people about the beauty,'' she explained.
She had begun to sound like someone from the local tourism office, urging people to look beyond Disney and take a short trip to savor the trails on land or water, the landscape and the wildlife that makes the rural area along the Kissimmee River Valley a memorable outdoors experience.
Beth was definitely in the return customer column on the tourism ledger sheet.
If there were complaints, they were that this section of the Florida Trail didn't wind through enough wooded areas and that the incessant airboat noise eliminated any possibility of enjoying a quiet evening listening to frogs and crickets or that a Lake Kissimmee fish camp called Thomas Landing turned out to be a bad choice to spend the night.
During Thursday's hike, the lack of shade was the biggest issue.
For a time we were in and out of the canopy, but mostly out.
We crossed a bridge over a waterway called Ice Cream Slough. What a tantalizing name on a hot day.
We found a place to stop for lunch that featured a live oak with a horizontal trunk suitable for settling in for a short break.
Whenever I stop in an oak hammock, I'm always amazed at the diversity of the sizes and forms of the oak trunks, each shaped by time, weather and gravity.
The area along Canal 38, the engineers' name for the ditched Kissimmee River, appears like a bumpy, treeless shell airstrip.
The shell was in the ancient sediment hauled from below the natural river's bottom and piled haphazardly along the edge.
Some tree plantings in this expanse would have made the journey more pleasant.
As we were thinking of trees, we saw a marker indicating the trail was turning into an oak-palmetto hammock. The shade was welcome. It had been a long, hot walk.
We passed by a dry, fern-filled ditch, meandered among palmettos and ducked under low-hanging oak limbs, but finally reached a hammock with picnic tables and tents.
I accepted an offer of a bottle of chilled water and rested a few moments before bidding my companions goodbye and catching a ride back to my truck.
Like Beth Kelso, I'm sure I'll visit again.
******************************************
Background post: http://www.southernairboat.com/phpBB2/v ... ght=#52909
Will anyone write this gentleman and newspaper a note explaining why there is so much wildlife & who fought to keep the area nice?
