Unfortunately I did not get to hug this one as you can see it is/was behind a fence. This is a photo of Chris and I on the Florida Trail last January, almost a full year ago, with The Senator.
The Senator is no more.
You see, this estimated 3,500 year old bald cypress tree, and 5th oldest tree in the world, burned down Monday morning. Burned down.. It’s almost difficult to fathom. I’m part of a swamp hiking group on Facebook and I happened to check my email Monday morning with a notification stating that the tree had been burned. I quickly went to search for news stories, hoping it was a pathetic rumor, but in fact it was horrifically true.
Somehow this tree had made it through Florida’s logging heyday. And if you look at that link, there’s a gigantic cypress being logged in the photos…devastating what we lost and didn’t realize! We took with it so many countless animals and plants—you can thank the logging of cypress and other hardwoods to the extirpation and probable extinction of the ivory billed woodpecker.
I hugged severallarge trees last summer. You don’t have to hug a tree, but you should appreciate what you have in nature, because it could be gone. If it isn’t a developer building on an empty lot, it is a potential arsonist ruining something beautiful.
I’m so glad we took the time to detour off the roadwalk we were doing last year on the Florida Trail and to stop in this park to look at The Senator and his neighbor, Lady Liberty. I only wish now that I’d sat there longer and enjoyed the tree a little more.
You can see their video below with Chris’ video spliced in at around 3:43.
We’re hoping that maybe this summer we can get to Florida in order to get some better photos of the sphinx moth pollinating the ghost orchids. Chris has something he’s trying to rig up. Of course that all depends on our job situation! But, don’t worry, you haven’t seen the last of ghost orchids from us!
We went to Kathy and Randy’s friend Dar’s house last night for their Thursday Night Drinking Club. Dar is an animal lover and feeds the local cats, an opossum and apparently one day an albino ferret showed up. It came around last night for us to see and Chris took a camera phone photo of me with it. It had a nice, outside smell to it and was super sweet, yawned a few times for us and made me want a cute little ferret.
This week will be full of ‘last’ trips. Every time I go somewhere or drive somewhere I wonder if it will be the last time I’ll drive by it. When we left Fakahatchee yesterday I was reading a magazine and when I looked up and realized it’d be the last time for awhile I said goodbye while watching the evening sun glisten across the fields.
I wanted to go for one last trip there but my idea was to go see some variegated Guzmania monostachia. Instead Chris and his hiking friend Rich wanted to go to a very distant population of Cranichis muscosa, the moss loving orchid. It was lost for a century when another population was found elsewhere in the Strand. Chris and a group went down to this population about three years ago and let me tell you—it is in the boonies. The tram we took used to be clear-ish apparently, but not this time around. We waded through ferns up to our shoulders and ducked under, over and around Brazilian pepper bushes. Two + miles of that. And the water was still fairly high out there for this time of year, not to mention cold!
These are the little plants. They grow on floating logs in the water or in cypress knees in some areas.
This is my favorite shot. I used the reverse lens technique on my 18-55mm lens.
The flowers are very tiny; the whole plant is not but a few inches tall. They are very non-descript if you walked by them in their non-blooming state.
We didn’t see any animals other than a cottonmouth that swam in this area that Chris is at in the photo. It came out of nowhere, but I heard it splash and saw it go over the log and off into the woods. Very creepy! Oh, and a smaller cottonmouth, very tiny baby that wasn’t going to move because it was too cold. But other than that, only bear scat and nothing else!
Brazilian pepper is one of the worst plants in the world. Ok, in Florida. I’m sure in Brazil it is lauded as beautiful and awesome. But, not here. However, I was eyeing a seed pod on a strap leaf fern and thought that it looked pretty cool.
And so I thought this might be the only nice way I would enjoy a Brazilian pepper.
When we left we caught Mike Owen and Karen Relish and a few other Fakahatchee explorers in the park office. It was good to chat with them since it would be the last time to see them in awhile. There was another person there who took a group photo of us but I don’t remember his name, but I do know his friend read my blog at one point. If you are reading this—send me an email! I’d love to have a copy of that photo!
So, goodbye Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. I’ll miss you…but not your mosquitoes.
Ok, so there isn’t a ton of packing going on this week, especially since Chris got back on Friday and we are just kinda getting back into the swing of things.
Saturday we spent the day in the yard, cleaning it up and getting it ready for the plant sale. It was a big pain but it made the yard look so much better. A big pile formed at the end of the driveway for the trash man (and women if there are any). Sunday we held the plant sale, cloudy as it was. We had our first sale back in November and managed to sell a lot of the orchids. If we’d been as organized as we were this time, we’d of done even better back then.
The one thing we learned this time around was to have back up signs. Apparently the city has sign meanies out there who pick up yard sale signs in the medians. This time we came prepared and put new signs out after they’d picked the first round up! Score for the Aggies!
The best person to come by was a lady who told me to load her car up and give her a price. So, load her car up I did. Chris added the price up and knocked a bit off since she took a lot off our hands and then he even drove over to her house to help her deliver some of them!
The worst person was this guy who thought we must’ve been in a Latin American market somewhere and was trying to make a deal. I was peeved when Chris ok’d him taking a 7-8′ loquat tree and a spoonleaf plumeria for $10. And the loquat had fruit. We’d had the plumeria for $10 and the loquat for $15, which were steals to begin with. The guy came back later when we were about to leave to take a look and he wanted our cotton plant and then he was eyeing the ylang ylang. He wanted the 10′ ylang ylang for $35 (HELL NO) along with the cotton. I told him to take the cotton and we basically shamed him into leaving. Top Tropicals has a 3 gallon pot for $50. Ours is at least 10-15 gallons. This was one plant we weren’t cutting deals on. And some of the orchids, too.
Alas, the ylang ylang is still in the back yard and I’m hoping someone on Craigslist will bite; someone did email me but hasn’t responded to that email yet. Everything else will probably end up on Freecycle soon.
Tonight we put more furniture out on the bulk trash pile for the week since our bulk trash gets picked up this week. I’m pretty sure it’ll be gone tomorrow afternoon since we already had people drive by and take the grill and our porch swing.
Slowly, things will get packed. I can’t believe we have 8 days left at our jobs. The insanity! Our route back to Texas has been planned and tonight we were scouting how we were going to get to Amicalola Falls State Park in Georgia to start the trail. So much left to do: planning food drops, getting things at REI, mentally and physically continuing to prepare and well, moving!
After going through the rest of my photos of Dinner Island I realized I didn’t have enough macro shots to warrant a separate post. Alas, you’ll get a mix of macro and sunset. I love looking at the little details…
Lichen holding on…
I think this is one of my favorite shots. It can be difficult to get light coming in like this, but I love it!
Probably my favorite sunset shot out of the set.
I didn’t think this one was going to turn out that great when I looked at it in the camera, but I think I like it!
A few things:
-Does anyone else have horrible spam comment issues with WordPress? I NEVER had this problem with Haloscan (which is now closing its doors, so go download all of your comments now!), but I get at least one a day if not more and it is usually on the same post. I don’t want to moderate every comment but this is getting ridiculous!
-We now have a Trail Journal page. It has an RSS button as well. I am planning on copying and pasting on each. I did three posts, repeats of what was on here in order to get the journal listed on TJ, and you can do HTML so it will be easy to c&p. But, TJ has a gear section and we are slowly adding our gear to it. I will let you know when we’ve got it finished and you can have a gander at it.
-We went to Little Slough today to check on the ghost orchids and make it a farewell trip. The ghosts did much better than we thought. A few were already on their way out from a dry spring last year, but only a few had some yellowing on their roots. One even already has a spike! So, things are good there. I’ll bring photos of those later this week. It was a bit bittersweet leaving it, but we have some friends who will keep a good eye on it.
I found Dinner Island WMA while on Google Earth one day. I am always looking for new places to explore, parks to see and find the little out of the way places no one goes to. Well, this is one of those places, especially when it isn’t hunting season. A long road winds its way through the property, and you can get out and hike through any of the hammocks any time. Cattle ranching is also done on the land so cows are very prominent as are deer and hogs. The last two you’ll see more in during the non-hunting times. Oh, turkey, too. If you’re lucky maybe a bobcat or panther and probably bear live there, too.
We went a few weekends ago with our friends Kathy and Randy for a long day of photography and relaxing in the very cool weather that had come through.
Chris sneaking back over the fence after trying to chase down an otter. The canal the otter was in was full of water hyacinth and provided perfect cover for the otter.
We found a few horses that were friendly and asked for a nice head rub….
and one apparently developed a fondness for Kathy!
One thing I love about Florida is being able to walk in the wilderness and run into citrus trees of all sorts. Usually they are sour oranges, ones you want to cook with and not eat straight, or grapefruit. When the Spanish came to explore Florida they brought citrus with them and thus after many years of colonization, settlers planted citrus near their homes and even Florida’s Natives utilized the fruit in their hammocks and tree islands. It’s a real treat to find some citrus after a hike, but on this day, it was even more awesome to find lemons!
Really, really, good tangerines!
Kathy developed a grapefruit belly!
This trio of bandits eluded us for a bit. They had scampered across the road, catching Chris’ eye and we thought they were maybe otters. After walking for a bit down the road, poking our noses in little openings in the bushes we got flushed them out and they trotted down the road.
Well, you’d hope people wouldn’t litter!
We found three baby raccoons running down the side of the road and Chris got the better photos since he was on that side, but I snapped what I could. They were so cute!
Stay tuned for Parts II and III! Macro and sunset shots…!
Ashleigh update: After having a collapsed lung on Saturday, it has since reinflated and everything seems to be going as well as possible with her blood work and x-rays, etc. Her kidneys are functioning and now I think they are working on the other end of things—check out how tiny her diapers are! That’s a tiny little behind! One day at a time…
