Geological salutations, hikers!

I headed in to the Aucilla River section with no idea what to expect – that’s because this section of the Florida Trail defies the imagination.  Straight away, permit me to salute the FTA volunteers who blazed the trail through this magical place and those who keep it so nicely maintained.  I am in your debt more than I can ever repay.

There are many beautiful places along the Florida Trail.. many, many, many.  But hikers, this may be not only the coolest five miles on the Florida Trail, but just possibly the coolest five miles on the planet.  I’m referring to the Aucilla Sinks.  Huge primordial sinkholes dot this beautifully forested landscape.  Winding through it all is the tar-black water of the Aucilla River, which appears and disappears several times as it flows from sinkhole to sinkhole.

As you hike here, you almost expect to see the beasts that roamed our state during the last Ice Age, and in a sense, you can.  Bones of camels, tapir, bison and mammoth have been discovered here.  Imagine such a thing..

Every step in the Aucilla Sink trail is a step into history so deep and mysterious that it overwhelms the senses.  To stand at the edge of a cliff beneath which a fully-grown river is noiselessly vanishing haunts the mind.  Images of these immeasurable caverns effortlessly swallowing a bazillion of gallons of water as easily as you and I sip from a cup of coffee brings one as close to a galactic black hole as this lifetime will allow.  Mind-bending stuff, hikers, and all of it right here. 

And “the sinks” have its share of hikers, the first of which are thought to have made camp here about 13,000 years ago.  They were Paleo-Indians, stone-age Floridians who recognized prime hiking and camping real estate when they saw it.  And yeah, they did it before Gore-Tex, Big Agnes, and, by the way, just about everything else.  These were some tough hombres, no doubt.

I dearly love places such as this.  Show me some rock and I’m a two-year-old in a candy store.  This is a land of deep, dark caves, gnarly-shaped rock formations and giant cracks in the earth that will suck the light right out of your headlamp.  Caves and disappearing rivers and crazy jungle trees crawling with sinewy serpentine vines thick enough to pull of a decent Tarzan act; all smack dab in the ethereal gloom of a “Land that Time Forgot” meets “Jurassic Park” terrain that just turns me all the way on.  I was shucking my pack every five minutes, crawling over, around or in every cave, cranny or cavern I could squeeze in to.  Cold, dark tunnels to the netherworld…who could resist that?

OK, yeah, sometimes it amounted to some creepy stuff… but I figured, hey, what if that whole thing about China being on the other side is true?  Coupla more steps ans shimmys and I could be ordering the No.3 with an extra egg roll. 

Yeah, the food thing again.. it’s unavoidable. 

Ancient caveman chopsticks Cheers from the Florida Trail, Mike