Day 1- Jewel Key
I launched this afternoon in Everglades City for this 80 mile 11 day canoe trip a stone’s throw from where Vice President Al Gore rededicated Everglades National Park on the 50th anniversary of the park on December 6th, 1997. I was a news photographer photographing the speech for the Naples Daily News that day and remember that at the time I was disappointed that it was Al Gore I was photographing. It was scheduled to be President Clinton but he was in Japan to negotiate the Kyoto Climate Protocol, something that at the time I had no idea what it was or what it had to do with the Everglades. With hindsight I realize how fitting that it was Al Gore considering he went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. I also realize how fitting it was that same week the Kyoto Protocol was signed. (An international effort to reduce carbon emissions which the U.S. never honored) If even the most modest global warming predictions turn out to be accurate, where I’m sitting right now, Jewel Key- a small mangrove island 6 miles west of Everglades City, may not be here in the future.
Earlier in 1997 I canoed out Rabbit Key Pass from Everglades City to Comer Key, an island that looked on maps to be fairly large and had a nice beach on it, but maps here in the 10,000 islands tend to be outdated. Comer Key is about a half mile to the northwest of my camp tonight. All that was left of it in 1997 when I saw it for the first time was a small sliver of soil about 5 feet above the high tide line eroding away with a large century plant on top of it. Not long after that (and to this day) Comer Key became nothing more than sandbar that is not even visible at high tide.
As I write this I’m in a hammock suspended from the tipped up roots of a large gumbo limbo tree that toppled over on the beach of Jewel Key, one of the millions of trees claimed by beach erosion in the Everglades. Gumbo limbo trees typically grow on higher ground and not on a beach. I’m no coastal geologist, but my guess is when this tree spouted, it didn’t sprout on a beach. The tree didn’t move, the shoreline did. I wonder how long it will be before Jewel Key becomes a sandbar?
As I was setting up my tent this afternoon by this tipped up gumbo limbo I noticed an old sun bleached lightning whelk sea shell that had a perfect round hole punched through it. I can’t help but wonder if this is a Calusa Indian artifact. The Calusa, who lived in these mangrove forests of the west coast of Florida hundreds of years ago before introduced diseases wiped them out. They used what was abundant to them to fashion tools, sea shells. By creating a hole in the right place on a shell for a wooden handle to go through they had themselves a hoe, or a hammer. Makes me realize I’m not the first person to think this is a nice place to camp. (as with all cultural artifacts found in the National Park I left it where I found it)
So far this trip has been going good, it was a short easy paddle out here with the tide. Tonight while making my pasta dinner I watched a dolphin and it’s baby swim by about a 100 yards out off my beach camp. Now that it is dark out I continue hearing the puffs of air from a dolphin’s blowhole. They must be very close to hear them over the waves coming into shore. One of my favorite things about canoeing out here is listening to the sounds of water 24 hours a day. Either the waves a few yards from your tent at night, or the sounds of your paddling slicing though the water during the day. In the distance to the southwest I see the glow of city lights out across the Gulf of Mexico. I’m guessing this has to be the lights of Key West about 80 miles away across the water. This is how I’m spending the next 11 days. I like it.
Day 2- Pavilion Key
If I’ve made it to day two it must mean I haven’t forgotten anything critical. It was a very calm day on the water, which was a good thing, I had a lot of open water to cross today. I always try to stay near shore, but here in the 10,000 Islands it is essentially island hopping.
Tonight I’m on Pavilion Key, an island about a mile long in the Gulf of Mexico. The beach is covered with large lighting whelk shells and clam shells. At one point about halfway down the island it is particularly thick with old bleached shells. Again I wonder if this could possibly be the remains of a Calusa Indian midden mound or it could also be left from a more recent clamming operation set up on the island before this was a National Park. But then again, there may just be a lot of shells on this spot on the beach?
There has been a devastating fish kill here since the cold weather struck a week earlier. There are dead fish all over the shores and floating in the water. With all these dead fish one was bound to wind up in an interesting composition for a photo. This has to be the first time, and probably the last, that I will be taking a photo of a dead fish and call it art.
Dead fish are common on wilderness beaches so it doesn’t bother me that much. the only thing that kind of creeps me out is that I’m washing my dishes in the same water that is littered with dead fish. It makes me a bit concerned about how sanitary that is. I guess I’ll find out over the next 9 days one way or the other.
This evening I neglected to pick a camping spot that I could put up my hammock, so I’m leaning against a dry bag trying to stay comfortable. I’ll have to remember to watch for some good hammock trees from now on. I have several neighbors camping with me tonight on the island being this is a popular spot, still about a day’s paddle from Everglades City. But this is a big island so we are spread out enough to still feel secluded. Tomorrow night I should start experiencing some more solitude as I get farther away from Everglades City.
A lightning whelk’s egg casings lay in the tidal mud flat. The large sea shells are common in Southwest Florida and are often exposed at extreme low tides, along with their distinctive coiled egg casings. About an hour after taking this photo, I canoed over the same place on the rising tide on my way to New Turkey Key.
Day 3- New Turkey Key
This isn’t a bad way to spend an evening, in a hammock under the stars on your own little island for the night. I’m on New Turkey Key, my only neighbors are a raccoon and an osprey family who have a nest about 50 yards from me. Mr. Raccoon seems very interested in my camp. I’m sure there will be many sandy little paw prints on my food container in the morning. You need to keep your food and water in hard sided containers to keep the raccoons out of your stuff or you may wake up with a lot less food and water than you went to bed with. I can also hear some more company I have tonight, there are a lot of shore birds having quite a conversation somewhere near me and another dolphin is off shore breathing in the moonless night. I can tell he is hunting, the puffs are not relaxed like the dolphins last night, but very labored bursts of air.
This little island is a small paradise, about a total of 150 yards long and 30 yard wide, complete with a lone sable palm tree growing in the middle of the island amongst the mangroves. Getting here today was a chore though. What I thought would be an easy 9 mile paddle was greatly complicated by a strong southeast wind in my face. I didn’t get an early start this morning because a very low tide left me 150 yards from the water on Pavilion Key. I didn’t feel like lugging my canoe and all my stuff across a muddy tidal flat to launch, so I waited for the rising tide to bring the water to me. Waiting till 11 a.m. maybe was a mistake. The winds only get stronger as the day goes on making for some hard paddling and some big waves. I have to applaud the hull designers at Wenonah though, my canoe handled the waves wonderfully. I think if I had been paddling my old aluminum Grumman I would have had to make several trips to shore to bail water out of the canoe. But with the Wenonah, none of the waves came in the boat at all today.
I’m surprised I’m not a bit more sore than I am. As always I started this trip completely out of shape and didn’t work out a bit in preparation, like I should have, but I haven’t had to take any of the Aleve I packed, things are going good.
The roots of a tipped up tree on New Turkey Key frame the setting sun at low tide.
Day 4- Hog Key
I guess you aren’t a real paddler until you have cursed at the wind. Not just muttering “damn it” under your breath, I’m talking about an out loud George Carlin style string of obscenities. After today’s paddle my arms and back being sore goes without mention, but my face is burning from a 20 knot wind in my face for 4 hours. This would have been a very dangerous day had it not been the fact I was in about 4 feet of water most of the day. (I was frequently shoving my paddle to the bottom to keep checking) There were surprisingly big waves for such shallow water.
I’m glad to be here on Hog Key with my camp set up in a very sheltered stand of black and red mangroves. Now that I’m off the water and out of the wind, it’s actually a gorgeous day. It’s only 12:30 being I started very early this morning, even skipping coffee to get on the water right away to try and beat the wind.
As I pushed off this morning on New Turkey Key the rising sun reminded me right away I didn’t have my sun glasses on yet. So I paddled out about 10 yards and started digging for them, but the already strong wind pushed me back towards shore before I could even get them out of a dry bag. Then I heard a horrible screeching sound you never want to hear as an owner of an expensive kevlar canoe. I came to a complete stop and was lodged on a large clump of razor sharp oysters. My windy morning was off to a wonderful start (hence, my George Carlin impersonation) I forgot about the sunglasses for the moment and just started to paddle.
Not 100 yards out into the open water after the oyster bar took a chunk out of the bottom of my canoe I met a sail boat that had been anchored in the backwaters for the night. It was a large live aboard catamaran sailboat, probably 30 feet long. We came close enough to each other the pilot of the sailboat exuberantly yelled out to me, “What a great day!”
I guess that would depend upon if you are sailing a 30 foot sailboat or paddling a 17 foot, 34 pound canoe into the wind. Obviously he’s never paddled, but I politely gave him the mandatory boaters wave and smiled.
All is better now though, I’m enjoying 80 degree weather now this afternoon and took a bath. A nice change from the 40 degree weather here in the Everglades last week. I’ve got all the clothes and gear airing out and took a nap in the hammock strung up between two trees swaying independently in the wind, the random swaying felt like I was back in the canoe, although I don’t have to paddle.
When I came ashore from this morning’s exhausting paddle and rested, or more accurately I collapsed for a half hour, I walked around a little bit glad to be on land for the rest of the day. I found tracks that at first glance to a Midwesterner appeared to be deer tracks, but I soon remembered that there are no deer out on these islands and realized that “Hog” Key is appropriately named. The tracks were about the size of a mid-sized deer, so I’m probably not going to be the biggest creature on Hog Key tonight. I’ve only seen one other hog out here on Highland Beach from a distance, the best way to see a razorback, but like all wild animals, they keep their distance. The only critters that invade your camp out here are raccoons, crows and mosquitoes, and they are only looking for a free lunch.
I’ve started spending a lot of time on this trip in the hammock listening to the weather radio listening for the wind forecasts. Tomorrow a front is coming through and it will be windy. Tomorrow might be my first “wind” day. I might have to sit out paddling tomorrow if the wind if blowing early in the morning again. I don’t want to repeat the day I had this morning and there is more open water I need to cross tomorrow.
