Fall is slowly coming to Florida.

The Santa Fe River between Bell and Branford.

Our September weather in Florida isn't what you'd expect for Fall weather in other parts of the United States, but very slowly we can see some changes that suggest Autumn is on its way. Still, with daily highs in the lower nineties, it's warm enough to swim in our beautiful springs, surf in the ocean, and otherwise enjoy being outside in the summertime.

My newest thing to do out in the water is free-diving, which is great in our springs. Here I am at Ginnie Springs in Gilchrist County, at the Devil's Eye Spring which is well-known for SCUBA cave diving but can also be appreciated by free-divers, though you can't enter the actual cave.

The Curious Little Town of White Springs

The Suwannee River at White Springs, facing north.

White Springs, Florida, sits just across the county line in Hamilton County near that county's intersection with both Columbia and Suwannee counties. This location in the far south-western part of Hamilton County positions White Springs right on the Suwannee River at the point where the springs from which the town took its name is located—one of many springs that feeds this great river as it drifts down from its headwaters in Georgia north-east of Fargo and flows through much of western penninsular Florida to the town of Suwannee on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In many ways, White Springs is the gateway from Georgia into the natural world of Florida—the first place coming into this part of our state where you encounter the Suwannee and also our state parks.

 The Sophie Jane Adams House.


At one time in the late 1800s and early 1900s, due to the supposed healing powers of its springs, White Springs became a leading center of early Florida tourism and several hotels were built here, the grandest of these being the Telford Hotel which still stands and is once again back in business as an inn and restaurant. When the Telford was built of red brick White Springs was a wealthy community due to its tourism and other enterprises; the hotel boasted acetylene gas lamps and regal parlors while just down the street stood the Sophie Jane Adams house, an impressive work of Victorian architecture in the carpenter gothic style. From the side yard of the Adams house, you can reach the banks of the Suwannee River itself, as you also can from the springhouse that protected the famed springs just a ways to the north. Currently, the springhouse—now a park property—is undergoing renovations, but should reopen fairly soon. The State Parks Service has a large welcome/information center located near the springhouse to provide information not only on White Springs and the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park and Big Shoals State Park—both of which are close to White Springs—but also the entire system of state parks.

Old Adams Counrty Store building.

So what's so "curious" about White Springs? For one, despite the two state parks and its setting on the lush banks of the Suwannee, the town doesn't seem to draw in as much of a tourist trade as you might expect. At times even, the whole place looks nearly deserted. Unlike a town like Micanopy, in example, the economic impact of tourism is not that apparent in White Springs, though I feel it should be for the success of the town. Last time I was there, I was encouraged to see the old Adams General Store being renovated and I hope that will portend good things for growth in White Springs. This town has some really lovely old buildings and the basis for a strong ecotourism economy, it just seems as though it's slow getting off the ground despite what appear to be valid, sincere, and smart efforts. I plan to write more about White Springs and hope to see it continue to develop into a place where its ample charms are appreciated.

Also, with its bounty of turn-of-the-century architecture, the moody river and its sandy banks, and even a graveyard near the river, White Springs seems like a very enchanting place to visit around Halloween!

A Trip to Blue Springs on the Santa Fe River

Blue Springs.

There are at least three—probably more—springs within Florida known as "Blue Springs", so when one speaks of one of them, it helps to ask its county or location to be certain which they mean. The one nearest to Gainesviille is Blue Springs on the Santa Fe River just west of High Springs across the county line in Gilchrist County. This is a private venture as opposed to a state or other park, and offers camping plus canoe/kayak rentals and swimming in the beautiful springs. The main spring is a second-magnitude spring with a depth of around 24 feet at its deepest. As I have a friend with a boat who lives on the Santa Fe a bit further west, I am often around Blue Springs, Ginnie Springs (which is another private campground) and Poe Springs (a public park of Alachua County). The Santa Fe flows westward and finally meets up with the Suwannee River near Wanamake. Therefore, you can take a boat from the Santa Fe on into the Suwannee and head either south towards Fanning Springs and finally the town of Suwannee and the Gulf itself or northward towards Branford. 

People returning down the spring run from the Santa Fe with a kayak.

Ginnie Springs is very well-known for its cave diving and Blue Springs also offers a clear, pristine, and decently deep spring to explore. A diving platform was built above the deepest part of the spring which makes it really popular with kids, too. The spring run northward to the Santa Fe is shallow but possible to navigate with a canone or kayak. There's a long boardwalk along the spring run all the way to the river which allows great picture-taking and chances to see wildlife at times. Also, there are several other, smaller, springs in the park: Little Blue Springs, Naked Springs, and Johnson Springs.

The spring run from Blue Springs headed north to the Santa Fe River.

I will write more in a later post on the ecology and geology of Florida's springs and the karst system that allows them to exist, but for now I want to focus more on the benefits of our springs for recreation and tourism. The counties of Suwannee, Columbia, Lafayette, Gilchrist, and Alachua draw a lot of tourists because have springs as do Marion and Lake counties south of us via the springs in the Ocala National Forest. Cave diving has become a big draw for these springs and has increased the economies of towns like High Springs even though it's an activity that only certified divers can partake in and thus not as common a use of the springs as swimming or kayaking. That said, cave divers often come from afar and thus stay in hotels, inns and motels while visiting. 

As seen in the photo above, kids really enjoy the springs and they also learn a health respect for nature in visiting them. To continue to have these great natural resources, we seriously need to watch how we use water in Florida: how much we take out and what condition it is in when it returns as wastewater or run-off from our homes and farms. The water levels at our local springs in the Gainesville area are down due to a lack of rain from as far back as Fall of 2010 and the increased use of water, including drawing water directly from the Santa Fe River in some instances. Recent rain this summer may help the situation, but it's still clearly disturbing. The Gainesville Sun ran an interesting and informative article on this problem recently which is availible here: Water Levels Down on the Suwannee River.

 Santa Fe River just west of Blue Springs.

For rivers like the Santa Fe to remain navigable, we need ample water, as do we for the general health of the springs and populations of plant and animal life they support. Some springs I've visited this summer appear in poor condition: Fanning Springs, for instance, while still lovely and clear is very low in some parts of its spring pool to the point it's only knee-deep in places. Royal Springs, a less-known location that is a Suwannee County public park on the Suwannee River is in even worse shape: when I visited it in May of this year, it appeared to have no flow whatsoever and had turned murky and warm like pond water. This can happen when the amount of water flowing from the aquifer into the spring is too low. As the rains seem to be back to their normal Florida summertime patterns, let us hope our springs will see better health. If you've never visited any of our diverse springs, well, you should because you're in for a treat.

discovering the hidden Florida

Cross Creek at sunset, near the Rawlings homestead, Alachua County, Florida. Photo by Mike Walker.

How is Florida, especially north-central Florida hidden? Even to those of us who live and work here, it is often hidden in plain sight because we're for the most part living in ways that align us with most of contemporary America: we're shopping at malls, we're eating at Red Lobster or The Olive Garden. Many of our homes are in subdivisions that could be anywhere in the South. We could have the same experiences whether in Florida, Texas, or Alabama. The aspects of old Florida—Cracker Florida, real Florida or whatever you may wish to call it—which make this place unique and special are removed from many of our daily patterns unless we either live in a really rural area or else seek these experiences out. Even in rural places though, I'm seeing more and more subdivisions, more mobile homes, more traits that I could find in some town in Georgia or North Carolina or where-ever just as quickly.

The real Florida, the hidden Florida, still is out there, however, in places like Cross Creek (Alachua County) where Majorie K. Rawlings lived and wrote her beloved novels and stories about Cracker life in Florida over a half-century ago. You'll also find the real Florida in Bradford (Suwannee County), the tiny hamlet of Day (Lafayette County), Wellborn (Suwannee County), the beautiful springs of Fanning Springs State Park (Levy County) and the old Wood and Swink general store and post office (Evinston, Alachua County). These places are not that hard (for the most part, Day may be something of an exception) to reach by car but they are light years away from the Florida of downtown Orlando or Jacksonville or even the frenzy of Archer Road in Gainesville. They remain unchanged mainly because they are slighly remote and the people who live there have no desire to spoil where they live, plus, they can come to Gainesville or Lake City to partake in the benefits of larger communities.

It this history, culture, and to a degree politics and possible futures of such places that this blog will concern itself with for the most part. I realize change comes and change is not always bad either, per se, but often wanton changes can happen and do a surprising amount of damage if we don't take care to prevent such. The greatest economic advantage of many rural towns/communities like High Springs (Alachua County) is in fact their historic charm and attractive architecture. Tourism—and not just that of the theme parks to our south, but the growing ecotourism trade based around our rivers, springs, and other attractions—is a job-rich, fast-growing field that is overall kind to our environment. If you look at Mayo (county seat of Lafayette County) in contrast to Cross City (county seat of Dixie County) you can witness how even something as simple as having an older, impressive, courthouse of traditional architecture can help create a sense of center of community (whereas Cross City, which bless its soul, is about to be picked on a lot in this blog but not without good reason, has an eyesore of a courthouse if there ever was such). The effort to retain history and the legacy of our communities is not one that is only for the older generations, the historical societies, or political sphere but one for each of us, because it really comes down to our own collective stewardship of our communities if we wish them to survive in their best form.

Currently, the U.S. Postal Service is planning to close around 3,700 post office locations in mostly rural communities across the nation—with quite a few in Florida. The aforementioned historic Wood and Swink general store/post office is one such location, as is the post office in Day and that in the small Bradford County community of Graham. The premise is that these post offices do a very small amount of sales-based business per day and most of their functions can be taken over by moving them to larger post offices and/or having them online. It makes little sense in tough economic times to pay someone—especially a government corporation's staff member with full benefits—to stand in one of these little buildings to only sell $50 or so of stamps and postage per day. Those are valid claims, however, these post offices also formulate the centers of their communities. They are where neighbors greet neighbors and share gossip and news just as much as the local churches and courthouses—other major centers of senses of community in small towns. A post office is often what gives a location its very sense of being a town vs. being a spot in the road, and that force of community cannot have a price tag placed on its head.

We are balanced on the fulcrum of the greatest change in our rural communities since perhaps the post-war revolution of the 1950s. Our older generation is truly getting . . . well . . . old. They're in their seventh and eighth decades now—some older. Our middle-class, middle-aged generations are for the most part divorced from traditonal rural vocations like farming even if they live in rural locations. This is not to say all our rural traditions are being lost: I know kids who have raised steers and hogs in the Future Farmers of America just as their fathers did; you cannot drive five miles any direction away from Gainesville without seeing cattle in the fields and rural churches still form the core of life for many people. What we are though in danger of seeing lost is acute understanding of the old ways, how chores and entire jobs were done a half-century or a little more ago. How turpentine was harvested from our pines, how a farrier does his job and how traditional crops were raised. These conventions of yore are the backbone of all we have in Florida—and for that matter in the rural South altogether—even today. They deserve a fighting chance of being remembered. Our architectural legacy deserves not to be overrun by strip malls or mobile homes which are exactly like the ones sold from Kansas to California.

I mentioned in my very first blog post Gloria Jahoda's efforts as a pioneer in the areas of researching and writing about rural north-central Florida and its anthropological and historical import: Dr. Jahoda warned us as early as the 1970s of what we were slowly losing in Florida—the fact that people who understood the old ways were dying off and their kids were moving to larger cities seeking larger fortunes. What we face today is the same loss of folk history but also the loss of traditional vernacular architecture which Jahoda didn't dwell on as much simply because from the 1960s to 1980s when she was writing about Florida, there was less of problem in this regard. Now, we see our material culture being erased alongside folk memories and both are worth seeking out and documenting. We have a rich cultural foundation of our current lives, and in the hidden reaches of north-central Florida, it can be located in full.

poem: "History"

Most of what I will post here will be non-fiction writing on Florida's natural and cultural history and also photography, but now and then I will also post poems I've written related to the same themes and topics. My poetry has been published in Meanie, the Church Wellesley Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and other publications. In addition, I currently write reviews of new books of poetry for several publications.

                                                   Photo: Rural Baptist Church, Gilchrist County, Florida. Photo by Mike Walker.

History


you know what I’ll say, about history,
about days—the past is present, everything
repeats like a clock’s chime. just lingers on.
just fades like paint, stripped by sunlight
and rain blown in by August winds. that
is what I will say about these places, they
command history with steadfast foundations,
rusted door-hinges, old books’ pages worn down
into paper that looks more like flour as it falls
from the page, a spade by the door and bottles
of patent medicines littering the floor. where
history is made—small churches, flooded
homes when you leave them by boat at
midnight with only two changes of clothes,
the baby, and the dog. think of rural courthouses,
small-town cafés, deals sealed on word and name,
auctions and funerals, yes, this is how history is
made—and most of all, in fields, at dawn-break
with horse or tractor, history silently is made.

the young doctor, the washer woman, the
deputy and the country vet. the farmer
who loaned your uncle enough money
to open his garage or grocery twenty years ago.
the farmer’s own uncle, who loaned him enough
in 1944 to buy nine acres and maybe a horse.
all of them told tales even if they didn’t put
pen down to page. it’s hard to write by kerosene
light, you probably don’t do it unless it pays or
the rough weather kept you in all day. after her
husband died, she sold half the cattle off, then
in a year bought twice as many when she realized
she could more than deal. rotated the crops, sailed
on, as surefooted as a merchant captain in a storm,
she stared straight ahead and looked beyond the
grass-sick, the bad soil, the blind calf, the drought.
these are the people who made history, and they
knew, because they nailed it into the wall, planted
it into the ground, nursed it back to health, even
if they never wrote of it in any way—this is how
history is made.

My Floridiana

In the 1960s, a young Jewish anthropology professor moved from the urbane reaches of Chicago to Florida when her husband, also an academic, took a job at Florida State University. Her name was Gloria Jahoda and to some she is known as an anthropologist while to others as a writer of fiction but to Floridians she's best known as a historian and a writer of the true stories of parts of Florida which held little interest to other historians, writers, and journalists of her time. Jahoda, you see, is the author of two seminal books in the historiography of Florida history: The Other Florida and River of the Golden Ibis. Both of Dr. Jahoda's books have remained in print, despite having been written and first published decades ago-certainly some powerful proof of the lasting power of her prose and her concern for her adopted state.

Gloria Jahoda didn't set out to write about Florida: having moved to a new place and without a job of her own after years of being engaged in teaching college-level courses, she was by her own admission simply bored. So she set out in a rattle-trap car and blazed the back roads of north-central Florida, stopping to interview turpentine men, sharecroppers, rural preachers, fishermen and others in remote reaches of the state who were about as far in location and lifestyle from the beaches of Miami and the typical impression the rest of the nation had of Florida as they could have been. Hence the title of her first book, The Other Florida. Since then, this term has in circles of historians and other social scientists concerned with Florida come to mean, aside from the book itself, the way of looking at history which Jahoda brought to us: That it can be just as important to see what a turpentine worker has to say about his occupation and his Saturday nights in the juke joints as it is to write down when the Spanish first came to Florida or who the mayor of Tampa was in a certain year.

Jahoda appreciated people no matter their walks of life, she noticed vernacular architecture and jotted down detailed descriptions of it and she had a deep love for the wild lands of north-central Florida: she wanted to see all she could of places like Tate's Hell and rural Hamilton, Columbia, and Baker counties. She stitched together a quilt of Florida from tales told by old folks at home and scraps of paper in the musty libraries of FSU and UF, and she did it all with amazing, deep, and nearly poetic prose.

I am no Dr. Jahoda: I lack her wit, her eyes, her odd advantage at times as an outsider, and her astute education in anthropology. But I appreciate our state much in her model and I aim to share rare and neglected aspects of Florida with others and most of all, with fellow Floridians. When we open up the newspaper or turn on the television and see the news, we so often get caught up in the drama of what has been said that day in politics or what bank was robbed or what topic some school board is fighting over or how things are going with the war in Afghanistan. All this is important, but what of the very place we live? How many people the world over would give up or sell all they have to enjoy the freedom the United States offer combined with the natural wonders, climate, and diversity of Florida? We don't have to wonder, because we have it all right here.

(The above first written by Mike Walker in 2008 and published in his column in the North Florida News Daily.)