Beer and Rowing in the Florida Bayou

It recently dawned on me that one of the few genres not dabbled into at the Bunker is that of the wonderful world of travel writing. Can't say I've published any recipes either, but I'll spare my dear readers that experiment. Last weekend I had the good fortune to enjoy a cruise on the Chaz. If you're not a local, the place is called the Chassahowitzka River. For all you spell-checkers out there, I got it right the first time. I know this place, and this river.

We go way back, to the days after high school and mischief-laden excursions deep into the heart of the Florida bayou. Back then a typical outing wouldn't have felt proper without a canoe laden with a 5 gallon jug of homemade sangria (if you can call Everclear mixed with Kool-Aid such) and enough firepower to outfit a ragtag army. These were not your sounds-of-nature brand jaunts. The backbreaking time spent rowing deep into the middle of nowhere served our purpose of getting far enough from the scorning earshot of the civilized world to raise our own special brand of hell. One that had been known to climax in the apocalyptic fireball of a propane bomb, as a dozen tanked knuckleheads danced through the flaming aftermath like mad Indians suffering the effects of too much of the white man's medicine. But that is a story for another day. And as I would now a generation later likely categorize my behavior as an environmentalist, one told under a pseudonym.

This story is about the quieter side of the Chaz, of its springs, flora and fauna.

The family and I had the infamous pop-up camper out for the weekend, giving me a chance to test out the newly refurbished A/C unit. Friday was spend setting up, cooking up a skillet full of burgers, and dodging the most common fauna: no-see-ums. The air was heavy with them, but when I biked up to the only convenience store in a many mile radius for more beer and hopefully the modern equivalent of DDT, the little fellow behind the counter offered me a squirt of baby oil from a jar he kept for himself. This didn't really keep the buggers away, but it kept them from getting through. They became hopelessly slicked in a bath of oil and wriggled around like a ducks in an tanker slick. Back at camp, from then on the game became to see how many no-see-ums our ankles could harvest.

It is said that the Indians named Chassahowitzka the “place of the hanging pumpkin”, but a glance around the dock come quitting time might suggest the translation had been fudged years back, with the proper moniker being “place of the discount six-pack”. It's a very rural venue, as a quick stop in the bar and grill a few stones throws up the road will attest. Ken Burns himself might be hard pressed to prove the South had lost, after stopping inside the smoky den, then losing his will and instead deciding he just needed to use the john.

But I'm a man of the world, and can usually slide right in with the locals with maybe a tweak of the accent here or avoiding talk of God or Washington. For those not as adept at ignoring culture shock, understand this is the Deep South, not Tampa or Disney World. We met all kinds there that at first glance fit perfect characters from the Simpsons. As to which ones I'll leave you guessing. But I never had anything but good experiences and conversations. Retirees, young families, hippies, freaks, rednecks, hunters, rowdy teens, scouts, they were all there. I did see a woman whose flapping arms were tattooed with no fewer than three swastikas, but soon got the feeling from the locals that even there she was an outlier.

On Saturday we arrived at the dock early to stake our claim on a pair of canoes, one for us and the other for the wife's parents, John and Marge, who were making their way out that day to join us. I had to laugh when I saw among the supplies in the canoe next to ours, a 20 pound propane tank. Had we boys begun a tradition so many years back? As a sober scoutmaster was climbing in to pilot the stern, I doubted such hijinks were on their menu.

An eerie sight in the melting mist across from the dock was the Vulture tree, where dozens of the huge beasts were warming themselves in the morning sun, ready for another day of carcass spotting from the warm coastal breezes.

One of the few activities shared between my trips of yore and this was a refreshing dip in the springs, which was our convoy's first stop. The natural springs make for some chilly swimming at first, but on a sunny day there is nothing more welcome. A remarkable thing about the place is the series of interconnected spring-fed caves interspersed in the limestone. You're walking along in waist deep water when BOOM, a gaping hole swallows the creek bottom beneath your feet and the clear view of soft sand and limestone disappears into an azure abyss.

The holes range in width from something that could swallow a VW Beetle down to ones you can pull yourself into with your hands clinging to both sides of the rock. If you've got a mask, a deep breath, and a bold nature you can swim them. Each pops straight down about 10 feet or so, meanders horizontal a bit, then pops right back up out another hole. When you reach the bottom, you can pull yourself along the walls and see the sun shining straight down to the target exit before you. It's common to bump your head as you instinctively want to raise it to look around. My lungs and nature weren't feeling up to that task anymore, but I blamed the lack of a mask. Still, my son and I enjoyed bobbing feet first to the bottom of the widest and worrying the missus.

John floated the idea that we should visit another spot called the Crack. I had a hard time not laughing every time I heard the name. It became a struggle against my own nature not to use it in as many double entendres as possible. The approach to the Crack led us up narrower and narrower passages as we made our way to the headwaters. It made for interesting scenery, with the channel squeezing down as narrow as a paddle's length in places. It was in a small pool that opened up midway there that I saw the only turtle of the whole day on the river. Besides the ever present vultures, we also saw ducks and other water fowl. Also a porpoise and a manatee in the main channel. I was concerned by the lack of other mainstays like turtles and gators, of which we strangely had not seen a single one sunning on such a glorious day. If I hear Chinese importers have been paying local yokels to trap every hard shell out there for their soup pots, I'll be mighty sore.

Eventually the channel became a trickle that wouldn't wet your knees, and we had to abandon our rented craft. As the others went on to finish the trek by foot, I tied down beneath an overhanging branch with a length of old cotton rope I had found tangled in a mangrove root on the way in. I followed carrying our sandwiches and a ziploc holding the camera and my son's Swiss army. Soon the waterway opened up again, revealing a hidden lagoon barely thirty feet across, centered around a large spring shaped like a deep crack across the bottom. Along one side of it a huge palm had fallen, now serving as a perfect diving board, or test of skill. On another bank was a strategically placed rope swing hung from a tree above the gaping black void.

As we were testing the swing and probing the Crack (told you I couldn't resist), a pair of locals made their way up, canoe in tow. As we became acquainted, I learned his name was Smitty. Truthfully it was Matt, but he had some story about a close relative having the same name. He took the bullet by letting the cousin have it, ever after to be known as Smitty. Personally I think he got the long end of the wishbone on that one. You never forget a name like that, and it has a ring like someone you couldn't help but get along with. Old Smitty fed me a smoke and some of the coldest beers I'd had in a long while. And some Arizona iced tea that tasted strangely like straight Bacardi. I take my hat off to the man and his wife Lisa for their hospitality. And hope I can find where they bought that tea.

Not long after their arrival we heard some hooting and hollering making way up the water. Out of the tiny channel popped a pair of teenage boys floating a cooler behind them. Close behind were their chickies, clad in what could only be described as nano-bikinis. Chants of “Spring Break 09”! The boys wore the glazed eyes of seniors recently set sail on their first voyage with Captain Morgan.

Smitty and I enjoyed talking the boys into various dangerous feats, giving each other grins as we dared the two to impress their nubile, barely clad mates. Climb higher on the tree swing! Try for a double flip this time! Ah besotted, corruptible youth.

Smitty and I made sure the boys cleaned up after themselves. I learned that he too, sought penitence from the land he once violated in his youth. And so we both carried on to enforce our eventually gained wisdom, picking up after, and maybe dissuading the next generation of hellions. Sure have a good time, but at the very least try to pick up your beer cans. I felt like a local again, at least for the day, and found myself slithering through muddy mangrove roots to collect the odd lost soda can for the trek out.

A few more folks made their way into the festive watering hole, which I began to suspect was the worst kept secret on the river, despite the unassuming backwater path to gain entry. One guy covered in piercings and crowned with a Mohawk impressed us with his trust in fate, by balancing both his packs of smokes atop a tiny rock poking just above the water's surface in the center of a pool. John tempted fate in his own fashion by walking the log, likely falling to the peer pressure of our 8 year old.

I must had done something to tick off karma myself though. When someone yelled they were going to try something likely silly on the swing, I muffed going for the camera and dropped it from its ziploc and into the drink by mistake. It was a fraction of a second, I tossed it back to shore like a fisherman wrestling a trout to the bank. But it was too late. It looked back at me, the zoom lens perpetually frozen in its extended position, like a bug-eyed stare that would never blink. I relished the thought that I'd gone the cheap route when picking out the wife's camera this Christmas.

Not five minutes later I caught a sharp hunk of root just right, and it tore into my foot like a punji stick into a tiger's ass. There was nothing to be done but call it a day by then anyhow, as I could plainly see all the places I had missed sunscreen. We made our goodbyes to all our new friends and ducked back down the creek. I noticed more tide had made its way in. As we made our way back out we passed all the others' john boats and rafts, beached in various weeded alcoves along the route. I let Marge doze in the front of my canoe as I whisked us dockside in no time with the wind at our backs.

After a quick regroup at the camper we piled into the family truckster, weary and dinner-bound. After driving us north past the ubiquitous billboards hawking cheap retirement enclaves we were soon within sight of the massive Crystal River cooling towers, so I turned us in toward the coast. The drive out to Ozello is like something out of a luxury car commercial. The fields of grass and pockets of marsh trees stretch out to the distant horizon. Pure nature as far as the eye can see torn only by a thin, snake of asphalt. The tide was ridiculously high, with the wind in some places sloshing the brine up to the curb. On a slightly stormier day, I can imagine the only means of escape is with an Evinrude.

We told our waitress about the wet state of the road on the way in, and she shrugged with the same sense of non-concern locals reserve for tourists the world over. By our description she judged she'd make it home that night without needing to call her man to fire up the air boat, that was all that mattered. Dinner was friendly, adequate and overpriced, the common province of restaurants with no competition in a 10 mile radius. On the way back we noticed the water had crept even higher, now covering the road in spots and lapping at my radials. The quaint homes I saw for sale on the way in now merely looked like the first would-be victims of a melting Greenland. I put the pedal down as we wound our way back through the splendid scenery, the last of the setting sun touching the tops of the cypresses in the distance. I had no intention on waiting for the water to climb any higher. I've had a car fished out of floodwaters once before and hadn't enjoyed it enough for a reprise.

After a quick game of cards back at the camp, it was lights out. My foot was throbbing, I could still feel the sun on my reddening legs, but the trip was a success. Fortunately the memory card survived the ordeal, you're looking at a photo of the approach to the Crack now, or were a couple pages up. And the camper? A pounding rain woke me some time past midnight but we were dry and comfy, the patter of rain on canvas like a hypnotic lullaby. At such times there is nothing better than knowing you've kept up on your maintenance. Most of its leaks had been banished and the thing now blew colder than a cheap motel. Ready for her next task this June at Bonnaroo.