Fifteen years ago today on March 4, 2008, the first of my four older brothers died. By his own hand. He left behind questions with no answers as I struggled to fight my guilt. But I kept marching forth once I pulled myself off the floor and stopped screaming. I wrote about it several years ago after Robin Williams killed himself. (Click here to read “Oh Captain, My Captain“).
I managed to forgive myself remembering what a wise woman once told me. “The rational mind cannot make sense of an irrational mind.” I find comfort in the words. The irrationality may only last a short time, but unfortunately, in that window of inopportunity too many folks make irrational choices that end in harm.
The living are left to handle the rest. We found that out again recently when my husband’s brother took his own life. His son, his…
My dad opening a tie I made him for Father’s Day circa 1975
My father never leaped over tall buildings.
But he would have tried if I had asked him, and four decades after his death, he remains a hero to me.
But when I think of my father, even today, it is tinged with sadness because only in his dying moments did he come to the realization that what he had right in front of him made him a success in the eyes of those who mattered most.
In the days before his death, he knew he had only a short time left with us, and he made the most of those hours. He called my four brothers and me, along with his wife of forty-three years, into the dining room we had converted into his bedroom. The room, not more than nine-by-ten feet, could barely contain the hospital bed and the accoutrements of a dying man, let alone my tall brothers.
But he wanted us there, and he wanted us to touch him. All of us. I stood at the foot of the bed with one of my brothers. When my father saw us there, he lifted his head from the pillow with difficulty.
“You two down there, grab my big toes,” he commanded.
He then told us that he loved us all and always had. But he said he wished the rest of the family could be there. And he meant our spouses and his grandchildren. The only grandchild present that day was the one I carried inside of me, barely visible during the fourth month of my pregnancy.
I found out I was pregnant exactly one week after we found out my father had liver cancer. My first husband and I had been married only a year and hadn’t planned to start a family quite yet. But that was not to be.
In fact, I thought my nausea when my father received his death sentence was the result of my great sorrow as I contemplated losing my father, the first man in my life and in my heart.
The day I found out I was pregnant, we drove to the hospital immediately to give my father the news. He didn’t say too much, but right after we told him, his cousin walked in the door.
“I’m going to have a granddaughter,” he told her.
From that moment on, I never considered that I was carrying anything but a little girl inside my womb. I told my father one day during his last summer—one month before he died—that I had picked out the name for the baby.
“We’re going to name her Anna, after your mother,” I said.
His eyes filled with tears, and he turned his head away from me. “I never cared for any girl’s name but Patricia Ann.” My name. And that was the last he ever talked about my pregnancy and his seventh grandchild.
At first, I was hurt by his refusal to talk about my child. But then I realized that my father’s refusal came because he knew he would never see my daughter. He would be gone from this world before her birth.
After a few weeks in the hospital, we couldn’t bear walking into his room to find soiled sheets and food caked on his face, lying there all alone too weak to do anything. So, we decided to bring my father home to die. We took vacation time from our jobs, and we all stayed with our mother through his final weeks.
One day my father called me into the small room and asked me to read his favorite Psalm to him, the twenty-third. I needed help remembering, so I opened the Bible from his bedside table and began to read. I choked at times overcome with the beauty of the words and their meaning now that my father lay dying. When my voice faltered, my father’s voice came out strong and sure as he spoke the words from memory.
His pale face lay against the pillow, and with eyes closed, he said the Psalm in his old voice, the one before the cancer, the strong authoritative one. He gave me the strength to continue reading.
The year before, when I came home to tell my parents that I was getting married, they both hugged me and began talking excitedly about the wedding ceremony. I wanted to be married in my parents’ home in the garden where my mother grew flowers of extraordinary proportions.
My mother mentioned my father giving me away. And I, fresh out of college with newfound feminism beating on my consciousness, said, “I don’t belong to anyone. No one has the right to give me away.”
My father didn’t turn away fast enough for me to miss the bullet I shot through his heart. Never have I wished more that my tongue and brain worked in unison. However, I never regretted what I said on my next visit home.
“Dad, would you walk me out to the garden on my wedding day?” I asked.
My father never made a whole lot of money, and he never found a job that made him happy. But he always worked, and he kept a roof over our heads. And even though he slaved long hours for other people, he never forgot he was a father.
He attended every game my four brothers ever had a chance of playing during their high school years. And they played them all: football, basketball, and baseball. Some of them wore out the courts and fields, and others wore out the benches. But my father attended every game, home and away.
And while my brothers will say that my father spoiled me, I will say that I always had my father on my side. When I was sixteen, I took my father’s 1962 Chevy station wagon out for the evening. Even when I came in the house and told my father the car had four flat tires, he never got mad at me.
“Must have been bad tires,” he said. “You don’t know how it happened?”
“No, Dad. I just heard something funny about a block from the house,” I told him.
I didn’t lie. I just didn’t confess that an hour earlier, with fifteen friends stuffed into the back, we’d taken a joy ride through a recently harvested cornfield. He never questioned me again, and I never told.
But two years later when I got my first car, he took me out to the driveway before he would let me drive away.
“Open the trunk,” he commanded. “Now you’re going to learn to change your own tire.”
And I did.
My hero. He never flew through the sky or changed clothes in a phone booth, but he didn’t have to do those things. He just had to be my dad.
Walking, hiking, exploring on foot—no matter what it’s called—gives me great pleasure. I especially enjoy trails out in nature with only the trees, sky, and hopefully, water tableau serving as the eye candy to soothe my inner voices of doubt. It’s lovely to see others out enjoying the same vistas. It’s a thrill to see children learning and enjoying the surrounding environment.
But there’s one thing that simply defies explanation, except to say that some of those out walking are so absorbed in their own enjoyment they don’t understand the unspoken rules of the road. Perhaps they are unwritten as well, so with this post I hope in my small way to rectify their lack of awareness and knowledge.
Single file, folks, when someone walks toward you on paths or sidewalks made for only one or two people. I’ve been walking on bridges, narrow mountain trails, city sidewalks, boardwalks with a foot drop off the side, and on rocky or root-infested trails when folks coming toward us remain walking side-by-side, talking, and not caring that I’ve had to stop, or where possible, step off the side to let them pass.
I decided a few years back that I would not leave the path or sidewalk when encountering these unconscious folks but would instead stand my ground on my side even if it meant I stopped walking. Sometimes they get it. Other times they just squeeze closer to the person connected to them by invisible string.
Recently, on a stroll on a beach boardwalk over fragile sand dunes, we had to stop several times as others decided to continue their stroll two- or three-abreast. There was no way we could step off the boardwalk because it had been built over protected sand dunes hosting nesting shore birds, some of them endangered species.
I write this post to enlighten folks who can’t understand why leaving the side of someone for a second, a mere second, won’t end the relationship, won’t harm the environment, won’t stop the conversation. But it just might prevent destruction of fragile habitat, keep me—who suffers from neuropathy in my feet—from stumbling if I’m forced off a path, or perhaps, it would just simply be polite.
Here’s my solution. When out walking or hiking in public places, be aware of others and surroundings. When someone approaches, leave the side of the loved one and fall back to single file.
Our first masks – kerchief, coffee filter, and rubber bands!
While the COVID crisis caused worry and extra caution for the past year, not all of it was bad. Our sadness at the suffering of others from the virus and its associated effects gave us the worst times. Because of my husband’s sometimes weakened immune response to illness, we became proactive regarding our safety. But we didn’t suffer because of it. Far from it.
If anything, the time of isolation strengthened our marriage. We enjoyed time together and time alone in our separate parts of our home. Online connections kept us in touch with loved ones, and we figured out a way to visit with my daughter safely three times over the past year. It worked for us, and we never felt deprived. Living in Florida during the winter did make things easier because we could still enjoy our activities outside without worry.
When we realized we’d be spending less money on outside activities and spending more time in our home, inspiration hit. Many projects had been put on hold because of health and time issues over the past five years. With good health, abundant time, and more money, we decided it was time to start home improvements we’d put off for years and finish projects put on hold because of life struggles.
It kept us engaged, gave folks’ work, and raised our living comfort beyond what it cost to complete the projects. Our silver linings.
First, we added a screened room over an unroofed deck outside our living room. I’d wanted this since I bought the house in 2007. Its completion exceeded expectations because it gives us another living space and a view of the lake/pond across the street, which had previously been blocked by a fence.
Deck Before
Finished Screened Porch
Next, we concentrated on the backyard which had been a work in progress for the past six years. We had to replace fencing and repair existing fencing, but it went in fits and starts. This year we finally had the time to do the labor to finish it.
Backyard Before
Backyard After
I tackled projects that had seemed too time consuming on the inside as well. Painting an old brick fireplace that was, frankly, poorly executed originally, scared me. With COVID time on my hands and fears put in perspective, I said, “screw it,” and went to work. It ended up as a four-hour job with spectacular results.
Fireplace Before
Fireplace After
We remodeled the kitchen when we moved back from Pittsburgh in 2016 after the house serving as a rental property for five years. New cabinets, countertops, and appliances updated the 1980-era kitchen. When it was completed, the result seemed lackluster. I’m not a decorator, mind you. I go instinctively and aesthetically with fresh ideas on the back burner. Until this past year when I opened my eyes. I saw a photo of a kitchen with a backsplash. I was blinded by the light. My friend, Amazon, provided the solution. And suddenly, my kitchen remodel was finally complete.
Finally, a kitchen with a splash!
The last project, a butterfly garden to replace a small garden circled by a crumbling brick wall didn’t seem possible in a year where we’d done just about everything. But then with a burst of energy, Robert did it. Using recycled material from our backyard, he built a butterfly garden now filled with milkweed, passion flowers, cone flowers, zinnias, and salvia inviting the caterpillars to begin the work needed to fill our yard with those winged flutter-bys.
Before
After
We slowed down. We reconnected. We healed. And we improved ourselves and our surroundings. The lemons laid at our feet became lemonade for our comfort and solace. And the butterfly garden brought us closer to our neighbors who often stopped to chat about gardening. My husband was even offered a few jobs to build the same for them. He turned them down with a smile.
I hope you have found your silver linings as well. Please share them here. I’d love to know how the past year treated you. Or more precise, how did you adapt to the year gone?
The winter of 2019/2020 may have been foreshadowing of what happened in the early spring of 2020. From the death of my brother to my husband’s myriad of physical ailments to surgery for my daughter, I’d had it by February and looked forward to a fresh start for a new year.
Once my husband recovered, we decided to get away, so we rented a cabin on the Withlacoochee River in central Florida for four nights. Rumblings about COVID gave us concern about attending a Detroit Tiger spring training game in Lakeland on March 10 with my in-laws. When the first Florida cases were detected March 1, we became concerned. Within a week, the first death in Florida had been confirmed, and we made the decision not to go to the game, but we’d thought staying in a cabin on a river would be safe enough.
And I’m forever grateful we made the decision to go. The trip marked the last of many things we’d be able to do for the next year.
The Airbnb we rented was a disjointed little place on a gorgeous piece of property. The large screened porch had a river front view. But we were in rural Florida, and life as we know it living in a liberal college town disappeared. I had to retrieve the keys from a neighbor whose display of a Confederate flag gave me a shudder when I had to go underneath it to knock on his door where I was greeted by a “harmless” barking pit bull.
Cypress trees and knees
We mostly stayed clear of the neighbor for the duration of our stay. We kayaked the Withlacoochee near Nobleton and paddled south, which is upriver for this Florida river—like the St. Johns on the east coast, it flows south to north. We paddled for an hour then allowed the current to float us back to the boat ramp. Such a beautiful and undisturbed part of Florida soothed us with its wildlife, old cypress trees and lush overhanging oaks.
Our Airbnb advertised a dock for launching kayaks, but either the owner hadn’t inspected the area in some time, or he had no idea about what is needed for a successful launch. Muddy quicksand-style mucky banks are not it. There was a floating dock we were told we could use by the Confederate flag-flying guy. His definition of “dock” differs from ours. Splintered boards and shaky engineering made getting into the kayaks tough. I scraped my back on the edge of the dock but thankfully didn’t break skin.
We managed to float off on the tributary that led to the river. Still tired from the upriver paddle earlier, we only took a quick tour of the river in front of our rental, but it was well worth it because we discovered an ibis sanctuary with lots of duck weed and an abundance of bald cypress trees.
Ibis sanctuary
When we emerged to the main river, Robert noticed a long canoe on the banks. A tent had been pitched nearby.
“Look at the size of that canoe,” Robert yelled out to me as I headed back to our little tributary’s entrance.
A man emerged from the tent, looking as if he’d just woken up.
“Sorry to wake you, man,” Robert offered.
“Do you have a gun?” the man answered.
“No, no, we don’t have anything like that.” Robert quickly paddled away leaving the man to his ramblings and leaving us puzzled and slightly unnerved.
Alligators woken from slumber seemed a safer bet, which we managed to encounter on our next trip.
The next day we took the kayaks to Hog Island—a park a short drive from the cabin. We paddled upriver for one hour and forty-five minutes. At one point we came around a bend and there was a large alligator on the banks. Robert urged me closer with the camera, but I had only moved a few inches when the darn thing jumped off the bank into the water in front of my kayak. Fortunately, the big guy didn’t go underneath me, or I might have been lunch.
I managed one shot before this alligator shot into the river.
We paddled to Iron Bridge, an old railroad bridge over the river. We floated back the same route, which took us about a half an hour less as the current carried us effortlessly through the shaded river.
Robert’s red rum
The Withlacoochee trip was much needed and long anticipated. I think we were reluctant to have it end, so we booked a boat tour/fishing charter on the Homosassa River on the way home. Captain John Dixon, a one-man operation, took us out for a private tour of the river and provided fishing gear. We each caught a red drum, but Robert’s was much larger by far.
Prior to the excursion, we had our last indoor restaurant meal at the Sugarmill Restaurant in Homosassa—a full-blown breakfast, which we enjoyed but sat away from others. At some point during our time away, they had finally started calling the COVID crisis a pandemic, and we were beginning to examine our behaviors, although masks were something to be used only by medical personnel.
As we finished up our business with Captain John, I shook his hand, and I remember almost recoiling when I realized what I had done. They were just starting to caution about social distancing and elbow bumping. A whole new world had begun while we vacationed.
More than a year later, we are both fully vaccinated, but we’re still wearing masks and have not eaten inside a restaurant since our diner breakfast fourteen months ago. I’m not complaining. It’s been a good year in so many ways. Next week I’ll explore some of the positive things that have happened since the Withlacoochee trip.
We live on the southeast side of Tallahassee, but when we drive a mile from our home to a city park, it’s hard to believe we’re so close to an urban area with a population of 200,000. We call it Piney Z after the name of one of the lakes and the neighborhood bordering it, but its official title is Lafayette Lake Heritage Trail—trails for feet, bikes, and paddles.
At one time, the entire area was a swamp-like lake, but in the mid-twentieth century it became the custom in Florida to manipulate water, and Lake Lafayette was divided into three different bodies of water. The northern region is mostly swampland joining two city parks. The middle lake, Piney Z, is the one most used by residents such as my husband and me. The lower region is overgrown with invasive plants, but a canoe trail is visible.
Spanish moss drips from the live oak trees on Bill’s Trail
We hike the trail which is part dirt—some parts filled with roots but overhung with live oak trees dripping in Spanish moss. The middle section of the three-mile loop, contains a bridge over railroad tracks and a boardwalk overlooking the entire lake, which is dotted with cypress trees. The final stretch is a wide dirt trail with water on one side and a tree-filled hill on the other. Fingers of land—seven around the entire lake—go out onto Piney Z, a perfect isolated place for fishermen or wood storks and great blue herons. The hike takes about an hour, and it’s a peaceful calming exercise so close to home.
We also kayak the lake. It’s about a mile from the primitive boat launch to the land bridge separating Piney Z from the lower portion where kayakers or canoers can portage and take the canoe trail for another six miles. We mostly stay on Piney Z paddling the perimeter or just going to a stand of cypress and hang out and watch the birds. We try not to disturb the osprey nest above if the birds are in residence.
Despite man’s manipulation, this little oasis of green in Florida’s capital city sustains our spirit while filling our senses.
Sen Abraham Rubicoff in 1964 after the death of Rachel Carson
You might ask who is Rachel Carson? I had heard of her prior to moving to Pittsburgh in 2010, but I wasn’t completely aware of her impact on the environment. There are triplet bridges over the Allegheny River in downtown Pittsburgh. The first leads to PNC Park where the Pirates play, so it makes sense that it is called the Roberto Clemente Bridge. The second, the Andy Warhol Bridge, honors the artist who grew up in Pittsburgh. But the third, the Rachel Carson Bridge, puzzled me.
That’s when I did my research. And I learned the author of Silent Spring started in motion the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
Childhood homestead of Rachel Carson – Springdale, PA
Born in 1907, she grew up on the banks of the Allegheny River in the community of Springdale, just upriver from the city that was coughing its way to becoming the Steel Capital of the World during the years of her childhood. Ms. Carson played in the hills surrounding the river as it wound its way to meet the Monongahela and Ohio rivers. When she found a fossil on the banks of the Allegheny, she became obsessed with the sea and the history of nature.
Ms. Carson was a writer – a poetess of prose – from an early age. But in college at Pittsburgh Women’s College (now Chatham University) the study of biology beckoned. She went on to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service where her talents as a writer emerged in the writing of boring fact sheets about species. She eventually left the USFWS to write books about the sea when she began hearing about illnesses caused by the wholesale spraying of pesticides. Thus began her four year journey in researching and writing of Silent Spring published in 1962.
The shocking and controversial book set in motion a string of actions that eventually led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of l the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, she didn’t live long enough to witness the explosive impact of her research and words.
In Silent Spring, Carson exposed the practice of wholesale spraying of lethal toxic substances on all living things to kill one pest.
While the book became a bestseller almost immediately, it created a firestorm of vicious attacks on Carson by the pesticide industry and the media. She remarked that her critics represented a small, yet very rich, segment of the population.
An editorial in Newsweek soon after its publication compared Carson to Sen. Joseph McCarthy because the book stirred up the “demons of paranoia.”
She didn’t want to write Silent Spring, but she stated in an interview, “the subject chooses the writer, not the other way around.”
The Earth Day Network credits the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, in 1962 as a “watershed moment for the modern environmental movement.”
The bald eagle were once endangered by pesticides, but thanks to Rachel Carson, they are now of low conservation concern. St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge
That first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, came in part as a public response to the gargantuan oil spill in Santa Barbara in 1969. Ironically, on the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day in 2010, news of another oil spill began trickling into the media.
Ms. Carson’s book from almost sixty years ago brought change – that can’t be disputed. The Environmental Protection Agency and passage of legislation such as the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act stand as testament to the revolution and scrutiny she brought on industry in the United States. But it didn’t protect us completely from big corporations’ quest for profit over safety. And we still have so far to go.
Yet, her words still are relevant and pertinent today, and we must not forget them. We’ve come so far since she made the connections between what we do to the environment and the toll we pay for its destruction. We can’t let her down now as we prepare to celebrate another Earth Day, the fifty-first.
The PBS documentary A Sense of Wonderuses Ms. Carson’s words in her final year to sum up her legacy.
Blue jay – Rocky Mountain National Park
“Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself in his cities of steel and concrete, away from the realities of earth, water, the growing seed. And intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into experiments toward the destruction of himself and his world. . .I do believe, that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and the realities of this universe about us, the less taste we shall have for its destruction.”
Residential Yards Can Hurt or Help the Environment
Fragile describes Florida’s environment and habitat. It would be that way even without the influx of twenty million plus people inhabiting it year-round then add in the tourists who flock here each year for days, weeks, or even months at a time. And of those millions of people, far too many strive for the perfect yard at a great cost to the environment.
The whole peninsula sits near sea level except for spots in the Panhandle and Central Florida that rise several hundred feet above the ocean. And the land that hovers above the Floridan Aquifer resembles Swiss cheese with holes and fissures that sometimes give way to sinkholes. The stormwater runoff and retention ponds filled with toxic residues of human life filter through the holes into the water supply for millions of people.
Water—the lifeblood of human and wildlife perpetuation—faces serious peril in the Sunshine State. If you live in Oklahoma you may say, “So what?” But we’re all connected, us very united of states. When one of us is hurt, polluted, compromised the whole of us will eventually feel the impact.
Plenty of studies show that the biggest culprit to polluting our water comes from agriculture and residential homes. One of them we can do something about today—the treatment of our lawns.
Wes Skiles, cave explorer and filmmaker, spent much of his career showing how what we do on the surface impacts what lies below. And what lies below makes its way into our bodies via water.
“I want ‘yard’ and ‘lawn’ to become the next four-letter words,” he often told me when I would interview him for articles about Florida’s springs.
Jim Stevenson, a life-long advocate and protector of Florida’s springs, still fights the battle. In a recent ZOOM presentation, he encouraged us all to do our landscaping part with the philosophy of “less is good, none is better.”
Our side yard and garden
It’s something my husband and I have practiced for years. Our relaxed attitude toward our lawn actually has more benefits that the big one of saving our water. We save money and time, too.
It seems our society loves to manipulate the natural world when Mother Nature is much wiser than us. But letting her do her thing leads the way to the path of least resistance.
Our lawn looks as good if not better than our neighbors who strive for perfection. We try to tell them through example. It may be why we have people stopping at our house when we’re in the yard just to tell us how great everything looks. We attempt to educate during those moments.
Here’s some of the simple things we do to maintain our yard.
Our recently mowed front yard
No pesticides—We let lawn do its own thing while being good stewards of the land.
Use what you have – We rake our leaves in the fall and put them around our shrubs and trees. Then we buy pine straw ($4 a bundle) and put over the leaves to hold them in place. In the spring, we get wood chips from the recycle center and put that over the pine as mulch. Also, mulching helps reduce the need for watering and weeding.
No sprinklers – We don’t water our yard. Some of the biggest users of water come from residential neighborhoods. If you plant native grasses and plants, they adapt to the weather conditions and don’t need to be watered.
Reasonable grass length – We set the blades on our mower a little higher than some of our neighbors who have the blade so low it scrapes the dirt beneath the grass and looks lousy after a trim. If you leave some “hair” on the ground, it helps retain moisture and keeps it from scorching.
Our lawn may not be perfectly manicured, but then neither are we. However, we know that we have saved time and money while contributing to a healthy ecosystem.
Backyard with the sun partially shining down on our natural lawn
During this time of staying home, we’ve found different ways to entertain ourselves. Some may question our affinity to one of our new pastimes, but it keeps us out of trouble and perhaps sane. Although again some may question that.
Twin Lakes
Our house sits across a private road from a pond known as Twin Lakes. There is a question where the twin resides, and the lake designation seems optimistic. Our road, subdivision, and pond are all named Twin Lakes, so the whole thing is one big misnomer. No wonder the wildlife here may be disturbed.
The saga began when two Muscovy ducks took up residence on the “lake” several years ago. This species of duck are a pestilence in certain parts of the city, but we only had the pair. Until someone got tired of waiting for the ducks to cross the road one day and ran over one of them. We were told by the wildlife officials the male of the couple had bit the pavement. So, the one lone female with large red warts on its face remained. We named her the Ugly Duckling, but she seemed so pitiful in her aloneness that we decided we mustn’t mention the Ugly word in her presence—this decision may be the reason my daughter questions our attachment.
Instead, we took to calling her UD. The only time UD perked up came in January the past two years of her widowhood when the Canada geese arrived for the winter. One pair comes every year and UD began making it a threesome, even going so far as sitting on the nest when the female goose laid her eggs. For two years, we enjoyed the ducklings born in the early spring although it was difficult for vehicles to come in and out of Twin Lakes when two adult geese, one UD, and six ducklings decided to own the road.
UD
Then in April, the Canada geese and their offspring would depart, leaving UD alone and depressed. We did our best to give her a cheery, “Good morning, UD,” on our morning walks and eventually, she became used to us and even followed us on our walks. We became her people.
In January this year, the geese returned, and the threesome once again resumed their odd little trio of waterfowl. One day in March, I heard a ruckus on the water and could see from our front yard large wings flapping. I walked toward the disturbance on the single pond Twin Lakes and saw something quite disturbing. I called for my husband, and when he saw, he said, “Is UD trying to kill it?”
“No,” I replied. “UD is mating with the female.” All the while, the male goose sat in the water watching, not more than ten feet away, while UD’s beak held the neck of the goose.
Several things shocked us. First, UD is a male. And “he” disrupted the habit of the Canada geese that are usually monogamous and pick mates for life. And I later learned geese don’t run in packs, especially during mating season. UD and Twin Lakes had turned nature upside down in our little isolated world.
Soon enough, the nest was laid, eggs deposited, and the female began incubating the potential offspring. We couldn’t go near the nest without the male goose or UD coming after us, so we left them in peace. During the day, the male goose floated guard on the water. And at night, UD took over the duties. Then about two weeks later, they abandoned the nest. The geese ignored the nest, even allowing me to take pictures of the six eggs that had been revealed—not broken but abandoned. Sometimes, UD would stand over the nest sadly looking down at the eggs.
The geese haven’t left yet, and this morning, I heard another ruckus between the three of them, but I didn’t see a repeat performance of the ménage trois of Twin Lakes.
When they do leave, as I assume they will, UD will come back to us for comfort. But we will never think of him in the same way ever again.
And we may have to rename him as the Stud of Twin Lakes, STL for short.
In researching the life history of geese and ducks, I discovered that Canada geese rarely take another mate. But Muscovy ducks have no such standards. While it is possible for them to mate (as I can witness), it is unlikely that it would take. But if it did, the chances are the offspring would be sterile.
Paddles moving in the water, shore birds waiting in the shallows, cypress trees dripping in Spanish moss—these are a few of the things I love about kayaking.
I began my water journeys in a canoe, but I never felt at home, either as the navigator in the back or the first mate in the front. However, I knew nothing else and loved the quiet and peace of the rivers of north Florida, mostly the Santa Fe near High Springs. One day, friends who lived on the river invited us to use their double kayak. When I first sat down and felt the steadiness of the boat, I knew I’d never use a canoe again. And I haven’t.
When I moved to Tallahassee in 2007, I began pursuing kayaking opportunities. I met a friend who had two kayaks but no kayaking partner. I found the outfitters in Woodville who gave me lessons and trips to explore the area, mostly on the Wacissa River where I encountered the dark and narrow Slave Canal. When I met Robert in 2009, I introduced him to kayaking. He’d always been a canoer, so it was fun to see his reaction—similar to mine years before—as he put in on the Wakulla River near Tallahassee. Once I’d moved to Pennsylvania, we bought my/our first kayaks, but strapping them to the top of his Rav-4 was time-consuming. Once we bought a pickup truck, that problem disappeared as we could just throw them in the back and be on our way.
Since then, we’ve put in some kayak miles on rivers, reservoirs, and lakes in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. And always, I am soothed by the water and its surrounding environment. And now we own six kayaks—three in Tallahassee and three in North Carolina. They are all used and simple rafts but that’s all we need. We don’t need speed or maneuverability since we go on slow-moving waters, mostly, with only one intent—to enjoy the beauty and tranquility of nature.
I began canoeing back in Michigan when a college friend asked me to go on a trip with her family. She and I had no idea what we were doing and ended up ramming the canoe into the banks and capsizing after we’d been looking up the high banks where four cute boys stood looking down at us and shouting. So much for looking like “hot” chicks in a canoe. We were “wet” morons up the river without a paddle. Another trip with my own family ended up even worse when my dad and nephew capsized, and my father’s hearing aids went into the water after we had warned him not to wear them while canoeing. It was a quiet ride home with my mother and father that night. Maybe now it’s becoming clearer why I so readily accepted the kayak as my mode of river transportation.
The Santa Fe River became my most travelled river after I moved to north Florida from Michigan in 1980. I’ve also traversed Santa Fe Lake near Melrose where the river begins then flows westerly until it flows into the Suwannee River only miles from the Gulf of Mexico. So much about north Florida can be learned from the slow-moving spring-filled river. From history to diverse ecosystems to its world-class springs, this river could be its own school.
After it leaves the confines of the lake, the Santa Fe flows into a swamp to the small town of Worthington Springs. At one time, a sulfur spring at this point in the river hosted a Gilded Age resort for wealthy northerners to visit to restore and cure all their ailments. Today, the sulfur no longer bubbles forth and only fragments of the manmade pool remain.
Once it leaves Worthington Springs to continue its westward flow, the river becomes more navigable but there are few boat ramps until it reaches High Springs. But before then, when it reaches O’Leno State Park, it dips its flow underground for three miles only to emerge at River Rise State Preserve near High Springs. This natural bridge played a large role in the area’s history as it served as a part of one of Florida’s oldest road systems, Old Bellamy, which was the main north/south road in north Florida. The indigenous people of the area depended on that bridge.
From the preserve, the Santa Fe is host to dozens of significant freshwater springs, including those of the spring-fed Ichetucknee River which empties into the Santa Fe only a few miles before both rivers feed their flow to the mighty Suwannee.
The river traverses a variety of habitat from pine flatwoods to sand hills to hardwood hammocks to swamps teeming with wildlife. Turtles, alligators, and river otters are common sights along with a variety of song and wading birds. Bears, bobcats, and foxes roam the shores, but I’ve never seen any on the river.
All three rivers, the Suwannee, the Santa Fe, and the Ichetucknee, sealed my love for kayaking. They also gave me an appreciation of the unique nature of Florida’s environment teaching me about the Floridan Aquifer from where the springs originate. It taught me the history of the Timucuans, a highly evolved tribe of Native Americans in north Florida and who disappeared within two hundred years of the Europeans’ arrival.
And the fragile landscape inspired me to be a steward of nature.
Directions: From I-75 southbound, take Exit 414 – Highway 441 south to High Springs, Florida. Before the city limits, 441 crosses the Santa Fe, and there is an outfitter on the right. From I-75 northbound, take Exit 399 – Highway 441 north to High Springs. One mile past intersection of 441 and SR 236, 441 crosses the Santa Fe. Outfitter on the left. From High Springs, take highways 27 or 47 north to find other boat ramps and springs on the Santa Fe. Highway 47 leads to the two entrances to Ichetucknee State Park as well.
Living Lightly 