Live Oak Blues What happens.

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The bottom of my kayak is a document of just how often I have scraped the bottom of every waterway in North Florida. I figured low water, like having to pick up others’ trash on the river, was the price I had to pay to do what I love. So unlike pretty much everyone else in Gainesville on Monday, I greeted the rain with praises of thanksgiving, because I knew it meant high, blessedly navigable water. Where there is high water, there are new places heretofore unreachable.

So imagine my disappointment when I rushed out to the Santa Fe just south of Worthington Springs only to find the sign above blocking my progress. If the water was now too high and really too low before, then where was the magic middle ground? Was this simply a budget thing, to take any opportunity to close the “park” to save money? To my eyes, the water wasn’t too high at all. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was perfect.

But with no gates blocking the New River right around the bend, I did not go unrewarded yesterday and, yes, I did see a new part of the New River. The river east of the bridge usually chokes out from debris in times of low water, but I was able to get through a few hundred yards of it with my formidable paddling skills and a rusty machete. The prize for all this work was a place of sublime isolation and beauty. The sun was going down and everything fairly glowed between the long shadows. I sat and listened to the water spill over new places in the river and when it started getting dark and I paddling easily back to the car.


Note: I will be leaving the country soon for a short while and plan to use this space to document my experiences. I won’t be doing any paddling there that I know of, but I hope that what I write about will be germane to everyone who reads it.

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When you’ve been dragging river bottoms for the past 3 months, you don’t let 2 inches of rain go to waste. So I (and Big Blue with a brand new patch on its arse) headed out to River Styx in the hopes that I would finally be able to get through to Orange Lake. I was not disappointed. In fact, it turned out to be a perfect storm of an outing, including hundreds of Sand Hill Cranes, an otter, a “waterfall/rapids,” as well as the requisite discarded body parts I’ve come to expect with any trip to River Styx.

Up and back, this took about two hours and at certain points I lost all sense of time, digging into the water, watching the debris float up and back down to the bottom, surprising the coots and Sand Hills. Toward the end of the downstream leg, I came upon an ad hoc rapids, a waterfall about half a foot high, where the level dropped noticeably. Checking the portage opportunities for ny return, I went for it and dropped down into Orange Lake, and the birds just exploded.

On the way back, I saw bubble trails but they were too slight for even a baby alligator. Soon, an otter surfaced and then curved back down to wherever they hide from us. In the distance, I heard a Barred Owl, apparently an insomniac, or awakened from my flailing upstream. If you need me, I will be back there today checking out the other side of the bridge. Like I said, you don’t waste a good rain.

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The Last Voyage Of Big Blue…For Now

Yeah, I guess I’m a little proud that inside of six months I’ve managed to wear a hole in the stern of my kayak. At an average of four trips a week for 24+ weeks, that’s some committed paddling. It also demonstrates that I haven’t shrunk from taking it through some tough places. Nevertheless, when you pop the back compartment of a boat you bought new less than a year ago and see it filled with river water, it does tend to bum you out. So permit me this moment of reflection on why I do this.


I have spent more time than I care to think about on the shore of a swamp, or lake, or river wondering what it would be like to go where people can’t walk or drive. I remember standing at the edge of Wakulla Springs one day for an hour, fantasizing about what lay beyond the treeline. That I did such as this for so many years without actually getting a boat of my own and finding out says a lot about me.


I’ve lived a good part of my life vicariously: experiencing bands from the floor instead of the stage, keeping up with friends who up and moved to Paris without doing it myself, reading others’ books instead of writing one. The list runs to the horizon and beyond, and this isn’t an easy thing for me to admit to myself. Kayaking is my small way of entering the active world, of actually discovering what happens beyond that treeline that anyone with a car can see from the shore. Sliding into that boat for the first time was a true homecoming, and I have tried to represent that experience in these pages.


By Saturday evening, my kayak will be repaired with plastic that does not match the color of the rest of the boat. I consider this a trophy. In the guitar world, such dings are called “character marks,” and so this will be. For once, I have followed through with a dream of mine and it has taken me places that in some cases aren’t even on the map. In however many years I have left, I plan to spend a good bit of that time in the unmapped places. Stay tuned.

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We’ve had a couple inches of rain in the past few weeks so the time was ripe for paddling without obstructions–or so I thought. Hopes were high when I pulled into the parking lot off Hawthorne Road and saw the lake much higher than I remembered it. But it was an optical illusion. Everything’s low and dead. The hard freezes have whacked the bullrush barriers for the most part, so I suppose everything seemed wider. But I was dragging bottom the whole way and had to turn around far sooner than I expected.

Paddling through the seasons means watching familiar waterways change personalities. Even the winter crew of birds has arrived–yellow warblers, rails and such–so it was like going back to an old school where all the teachers have changed except for that really old one who always said you’d never do anything with your life (Great Blue Heron). I suppose fishing for bottom feeders has dropped off too, because I saw almost no trash this time. Needless to say, the gators too are hunkered down wherever they go for the winter.

The highlight this time out was doing battle with the comically territorial geese that prowl Prairie Creek. They sensed me long before they saw me, or me them, and emitted their trademark rusty gate call to arms. As I sat there stuck in sand, the scout geese paddled my way, honking all the while. When it became clear that I wasn’t budging, they turned their abundant white tails and paddled back to their crew.

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The one I’m talking about runs vaguely north of the Santa Fe and is considered a tributary of it. I’ve lived 19 miles south of this river for  22 years without even knowing about it, so it was a new river for me. Union and Bradford locals sure know about, though, because they leave their water bottles, beer cans (Natty Light? Really?), and mutilated chunks of styrofoam as markers of their existence. They also leave nylon strings with now-rusty fishing hooks hanging from every horizontal branch on the river. One snagged my jacket so abruptly it stopped my kayak.

None of this detracts, strangely enough, from the sense that this is a hidden, stark, and lovely river with exposed bluffs and overhanging branches likes giant spider webs. So close to the Santa Fe, this river looks nothing like it, at least to these eyes. It’s wider, clearer, and its banks more accessible (hence the debris). About 2 miles downriver, I decided to turn around: this is a river I want to share with someone else, and I will bring a trash bag.

In one of those revelations that come to us as something utterly new, but seem so obvious later, I realized on this river that my love for wild places, outside places–which has, as I’ve gotten older, morphed into a dedicated obsession–comes from my father who taught me to paddle, camp, hike, and sleep with the windows open to hear the crickets and the roosters. Because of him I know what it’s like to sleep under a tin roof in a rain storm, something every human being should experience. Whenever I find myself in the middle of nowhere (like hiking deep in a damp, mossy forest in British Columbia or carrying my son down the Narrows of Zion National Park) he is right there with me.  Thanks Daddy.  I love you.

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To complete my Virginia kayaking trifecta, I needed to get in some salt water, one because the ice would be at a minimum there, but mostly because the trip would not be complete without getting into the Chesapeake Bay at least once (the Atlantic Ocean remains a goal). Most of the access points were closed for the snow but I found one on Lynnhaven Bay that worked fine, and the caretaker did not question my sanity for wanting to kayak on a day like today. I paid my fee and he pointed me to a steep, snowy dune to the right of the parking lot.

There was ice here but it was wafer thin and sounded like breaking eggshells as I plowed through it. Out in the channel, the incoming tide made navigation uncertain. The tide seemed to want to steer me into the shoals that piled up next to the channel. I found out later that the current is strongest where Chesapeake Bay flows into Lynnhaven–right where I was. I can attest to that. After I fought my way past the bridge that marks the beginning of Chesapeake Bay, I let myself drift and the current shot me back under the bridge faster than I have ever traveled in my boat.

I can now say this about winter kayaking: one should do more of it. The cold, I have found, isn’t even a factor. You warm up as soon as you start paddling, and once you’ve achieved that sense of balanced that an experienced kayaker has, Bob’s yer uncle. The only impediment, if you can even call it that, is the skepticism of those whom you tell about your winter kayaking. I’ve spent a lifetime of people looking at me funny, so that didn’t bother me much.

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“What the hell kinda drugs you been smoking?” asked the guy at the marina when I asked if I could put my kayak in at West Neck. There was nothing but ice as far as I could see. But I had tried two other places and I was determined to put in this time. So I paid my three bucks and booked it on down to the ramp. Marina Guy went along to witness what he felt sure was going to be a self-inflicted disaster. I put on my cold gear, threw the machete into the kayak, and slide on into the ice.

Any hope I had that this ice was actually slush disappeared immediately. This was 2-inch-thick ice. But the bow of a kayak makes a serviceable ice cutter (as does a machete) and you get far more purchase with a paddle in ice than in water, as it turns out. Soon I had a rhythm going: chop, pull, rock, ram, pull, and so on. On the shore I could see my brother and Marina Guy snapping pics. Marina Guy also apparently called one of his friends to tell them of the crazy man who insisted on kayaking in frozen water.

On the way back, the trail I blazed funneled me right back to shore. The dilemma with addictive kayaking is finding new places and experiences after the old ones wear out. This was one of the best. I was feeling a bit blah before, but after I felt like a new man. Make that two jaunts in freezing water without falling in.

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Yesterday I drove up to Virginia to meet the heaviest snowfall there in a quarter century, kayak atop my new ride. As they say in the theatre, if you bring a cannon onstage, you’d better fire it. So fast forward to today: 30 degrees, 30-mph wind, and me sliding into my kayak seat and paddling down the Hague–a residential tributary that leads to the Elizabeth River, the Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and, theoretically, to China.

This happened not without protest from my youngest brother, who told me, among other things, “I’d rather hear about your death than see it in person.” True, if I’d fallen in, all bets would be off, but I was actually warmer in the kayak than I’ve been for two days. It was significantly more cold in Colorado. I didn’t even attract all that much attention. Apparently, dragging a blue kayak down the middle of Olney Rd. isn’t that out of the ordinary.

I steered through a congregation of bewildered seagulls with beautiful, arctic-looking plumage. The water was choppy but quite manageable. I did hit a stiff headwind on the way back, but at no time did I feel out of control. As I’ve mentioned before, I can get in and out of a kayak like a trained monkey at this point.


This place–where I grew up and learned to paddle–is rife with kayaking options. I plan to hit at least three of them while I’m here. At the very least I want to see how the swamps compare to the ones in Florida. Bring it on.

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This is what it feels like when a manatee buzzes you from down under: the boat drops suddenly then pops back up, like a small dip on the water flume. I saw two of them and I’m pretty sure they didn’t know what to make of Big Blue encroaching on their territory. I devoted a good bit of time trying to catch them on camera–in vain–and spent the rest of the trip watching schools of fish jump out of my way, weaving their way through the eel grass. I couldn’t help but compare the manatee’s graceful meanderings with the violent escapes of the alligator, both of which I have now experienced.

This is what it feel like when your truck gives up the ghost on the way back: a sharp, and sustained, feeling of “oh shit.” I spent nearly four hours in a small town not too far from here, and that was long enough to tell you everything you need to know about the following: the reliability of a certain local mechanic, the abundance of crack cocaine in said town, the alleged internecine goings on of the town council, and the wonderfulness of the local BBQ. I spent eating this, by the way, while watching an episode of “Cops In Vegas.” Apparently, prostitution is worthy of an all-out sting operation, a la “Reno 911.” Had I been prone to an extra dose of depression on this day, watching cops bust prostitutes on TV while waiting for a truck repair I knew would not be successful would have likely put me over the edge.

My kayak fits oh so well atop my old, faithful truck. The thought of this being the end of our journeys is sad indeed. But I am still in get-it-done mode right now and I can’t think about it too deeply. Never fear, though, my boat will get into the water somehow. I confess it has become a less-than-daily enterprise these days, what with the cold and all. I’m still out three times or so a week and there’s the small matter of my being addicted to it, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.