"Florida Attacks"

So, I had something happen yet again today, something that has been plaguing me increasingly over the past two years or so. This something is a thing that saps my strength and completely prevents me from concentrating on anything else.

...Yes, it's love...

A spurt of loving pessimism (ha ha) that I have come to know as a "Florida Attack."

Sometimes these Florida Attacks can be good (such as when I strike inspiration in the swamp), and sometimes they can be bad...
Today's was bad, and, as usual, it happened at a bad time.

I stepped out of my 5th period class into a choking haze of smoke blown down from the land of Georgia (God help them.) As I began my daily walk outside toward my 6th/7th period block class, it hit me like a sack of p'taters....
I can't really descibe the feeling. Just thoughts like "Once it's gone, there's no turning back," and the likes of that.
I walked into my freezing cold chemistry classroom and immediately went back outside to lengthen my walk and to think.

...What I thought...I can't put on paper (er, keyboard?) right now, so you will have to wait on that...

However, it did succeed in putting me in a bad mood all throughout 6th/7th block, to the dismay of the people sitting around me (sorry, guys.)

When I walked outside to the parking lot after my Chemistry class period was over, I was beginning to cool off. I was just glad the school day was over and I could go home and have some time alone. Then I heard the THUD and BEEP, BEEP, BEEP sounds of construction (the developer's word for "destruction") behind my school, and this set me off on another loop. My school is currently situated in the middle of the woods, in the remnants of this once rural area of my county. That will not be true in a few years, as the expansive pine plantation surrounding my school are slated to be clear-cut for yet another development.

As these thoughts ran through my mind, I spotted a raccoon wandering in the palmettos just outside of the parking lot, and I thought Where is HE supposed to go? Where's a cracker supposed to go? I suppose we're both slated for extinction, just as that development is slated to destroy.

Just another day in the life of a Floridaphile.

Wow, this post was so horribly written, it ought to not even be posted. However, I must put it out there. This is the way we humans think sometimes.

Why I am an Environmentalist

My friends often call me a "tree hugger" and ask me if I want to "save the whales." Well, yes, I love to be in the woods, and I do not want to see them gone. And, yes, if a Right Whale where to wash up on St. Augustine Beach, I would be there to help get it back in the water. However, I do not participate in the blind environmentalism that many people in this country do (*cough**cough*Al Gore*cough*)

Seeing the destruction of natural areas in Florida is horrible, yes, but this is only a visible symptom of a deeper problem: the destruction of a people...a people with unique lives, values, and feelings. I am one of those people...one of the last of my people.

I visited a subdivision last Saturday that is being built on a potato farm that a member of my family used to own. Seeing the cookie-cutter houses on a piece of land that my family has owned for centuries did not sit well with me.

It was a farm. It wasn't a forest with Gophers and woodpeckers, and it wasn't a swamp with Bartram's Ixia and gators. It was a dang potato farm...bad for the environment.

So, what's the problem?

You can set aside nice little preserves to protect plants and animals. You cannot confine a people to a "Florida Cracker Preserve" or a "Minorcan Island." You get to a boiling point, and once it is reached, a culture will disappear forever...It will become blended with the invading culture, or it will be spread out to the point that it dies out within a few generations. This is what happened to the Native American peoples who were able to survive the illnesses that European invaders brought with them. They are fortunate, though, in that they DO have reservations just for them...Lucky souls.

The saddest thing to ever occur in my homeland since the destruction of the Timucuans or the displacement of the Seminoles, is the ongoing extinction of the Florida Cracker and Minorcan cultures...Much more sad than the ongoing extinction of the Gopher Tortoise.

These people moving into these cookie-cutter subdivisions, these people moving from whatever cultureless landscape from which they came, will never understand the pain of watching their culture get destroyed by foreigners. It's the modern War Between the States...It's an invasion.

This, my friends, is the reason I oppose development. I love the swamp, I love the woods, I love the mighty St. Johns, I love animals, I love plants, I love gators, I love ancient cypress trees, I love all this...But I love my people more.

If only they felt the pain...

Julington-Durbin Preserve

Julington-Durbin Preserve is a brand new, 2000-acre protected point of land between Julington Creek and Durbin Creek in north Florida. This very diverse piece of land consists of natural longleaf pine forests, sandhill, and swamp. All three times I have been out there, I have seen bear and deer tracks in the road and some monster armadillos feeding in the bushes. The land was originally slated to be a golf course and gated community by the sickos developing the Bartram Park development in southern Duval County (on land from which gopher tortoises mysteriously disappeared.) Fortunately, a deal was worked out with the state of Florida and the St. Johns River Water Management District, and the land was bought for a public park.

My friend, Phil, and I went out to the preserve two weeks ago to walk a portion of the nine miles of trails blazed through the park. The following is a photo essay of our experience. As you read, try to picture this beautiful piece of land as a golf course and a gated community full of manicured lawns and rich people.

Most of the trails lead through the quickly disappearing Longleaf Pine ecosystem that is unique to north Florida and south Georgia. This naturally beautiful ecosystem is home to many endangered animals such as gopher tortoises, indigo snakes, and red cockaded woodpeckers. In some areas, you may be lucky enough to spot hooded pitcher plants with their long, carniverous flowers or the bright fruit of the beautyberry bush. It is not unusual to hear armadillos, raccoons, and deer rummaging around in the palmettos and wiregrass off the trail.

This intriguing wild animal followed me all along the trail. He seemed curious...

This is part of the red-blazed trail. In my opinion, it is the most scenic one in the park. It leads back through the swamp along an old logging road down to Durbin Creek.

This is Durbin Creek about a half-mile downstream from the power lines and the huge gator. Almost the entire stretch of this creek is completely pristine. But look across the creek in this picture. Enjoy the undisturbed swamp while it lasts, because in a few years there will be big docks lining that bank, all thanks to my favorite people in the world, the developers of Bartram Park.


A timber company used to own part of the land the preserve sits on, and there was a cultivated forest of Slash Pines on here. The park managers have taken out the un-natural Slash Pines and have planted Longleaf Pines in their place. In 50 years this forest will be an oasis of natural beauty in a land filled with cookie-cutter houses, rich people, and transplants..."Progress"

My Editorial

This is the editorial I wrote that was printed by the Florida Times-Union last Thursday, for those of you who do not subscribe to that paper. I know almost all of you who read my blog will be saying "amen" to pretty much everything in here. You're true Floridians :-D.

As a ninth-generation native Floridian, I have an indescribable love for the state in which we live. In my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful parts of this nation in many different ways. But what I look around my homeland, I see my beloved native soil being torn apart before my very eyes. The greedy pillaging of our land, commonly known as "progress" or "development," has wreaked permanent destruction upon Florida's land and culture. It is vital that, as responsible representatives, the leaders of our community take a step back and look at what is being lost as we develop our land. Pick up a kayak paddle, lace on a pair of hiking boots, attend the Florida Folk Festival, and go see what true Florida is about. I am sure you will all be horrified by the destruction, too, after you seee what is out there being destroyed. If we do not implement tighter controls on development now, the Floridian heritage will be relegated to history books by the time my children attend school. I am sure you do not want to be remembered as the generation that destroyed Florida.