Once upon a time, while attending a three week training course at Brunswick, GA I had some free time on the weekend.  I rounded up a couple of guys for a canoe trip into the Okefenokee Swamp, at least, I had a couple until they heard about the prehistoric critters that still lived in the swamp.  Suddenly, it was no longer a group of us going it was a one man excursion.

I entered the swamp on the east side at the Suwanee Canal Recreation Area where I was able to rent a canoe, loaded my ice chest with my ice, my soft drinks, my Milky Way candy bars, my vienna sausages and crackers and set out down the canal headed in the direction of the Suwanee River of Stephen Foster fame.

After a mile or so you can cut out of the canal into the open swamp country where you just paddle along the water trails.  If solitude is what you are seeking, this is the place for it, thousands of acres and apparently not another living soul out there, well, not until I ran into a feller by the name of Al. E. Gator, but that's getting ahead of myself.

After a couple of quiet hours just easy paddling along, I'm heading back for the canal when I come to a merging of the water trail I'm following and one coming in from the right.  Well, that's where I met Mr. Al E. Gator, of course coming from the right he had the right of way.  I was ready to give it to him when he rolled and went under the water, in case anyone is slow on the pickup old Al was a big ole alligator.  I immediately sat down in the bottom of the canoe to get my center of gravity as low as possible, figuring he might just come up underneath me.  I later realized he had just beat it to the canal as fast as he could go.  I probably surprised him as much as he scared me.

I paddled on back into the canal, it's about half the width of Cane River, and headed back to the landing where I had put in.  I finally met another person and it was a family with young children in their canoe.  The father evidently had not much experince pushing a canoe and was basically going back and forth from one bank to the other, where there occasionally was a small gator but they would just hit the water and disappear.  The other paddler stopped me and asked how to keep his canoe straight, I gave him a short course in J stroking and using your paddle as a rudder for steering.  I hope they made it back because he was going to be one tired man.

It really was a nice way to spend a day, if you enjoy the backwoods and know how to paddle a canoe.  Along the road coming in and going back out I was able to stop an an old Primitive Baptist Church, no glass windows, just wooden shutters, no electricity, the pulpit had a plaque identifying the round hole as having been made by a rifle ball during the Indian Wars in Florida.  There was another stop where the state had on display an old "farmstead".  It had been the home of a man who raised five kids and put them all through college by collecting turpentine from pine trees.  The house was made of heart pine, had never had a drop of paint and was as solid as the day it was built right on the shores of that swamp.  He had his own black smithing shop, grape arbor, and the yard had not a single sprig of grass but was white sand that was kept raked.  The docent explained the reason for the raking of the yards, it was to prevent a woods fire from getting to the house and it also would allow one to tell if a snake had entered the yard and crawled under the house leaving a zig zag trail behind him.  And some of you, the country boys and girls, may remember the automatic gate closers utilizing a post with a chain or rope to the gate bearing a weight.  When you pulled the gate open to enter or leave and let it go the weight on the chain/rope would automatically close the gate.

Around on the north end of the swamp at Waycross, GA is a visitor's center that is interesting, also.

I might have to take another trip out into that swamp and spend the night, hmm, wonder if I can get Polly to do that.  It would be nice to lie there in your sleeping bag listening to the night sounds.  :)