Inspiring. Meaningful. Adventure.

Place-based Learning in the Great Outdoors

It's Fall Y'all. In this issue we hear again from Ryan Smart, the executive director of the Florida Springs Council, about Ocklawaha River and springs restoration efforts and urgency of public input. We also hear from Peter Kleinhenz from Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy about the history and wonders of the Aucilla river. As red tide and algae blooms threaten the gulf coast, we hear more about the consequences and potential solutions. You can find out more about the crisis concerning freshwater springs, and delve into the reasons why we need to get more 'circular' in our approach to trash disposal.

New data has revealed that this past July was the hottest ever. We also discovered that the last seven years were the hottest in recorded history. If you look at it another way, the last seven years will have been the COOLEST we have seen if the current trend continues. Think about that and watch this space.

2021-2022 Paddle Florida Season

Happy Paddler Exclusives

Right now, we have a generational opportunity to bring back twenty lost Florida’s springs and protect one of Florida’s great aquatic systems by breaching the Rodman Dam and restoring the Ocklawaha River. We need your help.

The St. Johns River Water Management District is soliciting comments on Ocklawaha Restoration until October 22nd. Please take this important opportunity to tell the District and Governor DeSantis that you support restoring the Ocklawaha River and the Great Florida Riverway. You can find more information and a link to the survey at https://www.floridaspringscouncil.org/free-the-ocklawaha.

Breaching the Rodman Dam and restoring the Ocklawaha River is the most beneficial and cost-effective environmental project in Florida. [Read more…]

Time travel, at least at the time I write this in 2021, is impossible. That being said, you can get pretty darn close if you paddle down the Aucilla River. 

The Aucilla winds approximately 90 miles from Thomasville, Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico, and the majority of its banks within Florida are permanently conserved. As a result, wherever you put in on the navigable sections of the river, you are passing by natural landscapes virtually the entire way. Once you head downstream, it’s very easy to start seeing the past all around you.

Massive bald cypress trees line the banks, especially in the upper portion of the river. Mastodon dung has been found in Aucilla River sinkholes that contain cypress needles and seeds, indicating that the relatives of trees still standing along the river once fed those massive pachyderms. Some of the largest trees a paddler passes on the Aucilla likely housed nesting Carolina parakeets and ivory-billed woodpeckers, and may have served as foraging habitat for the Bachman’s warbler. Like the mastodon, all three of these bird species are now extinct. [Read more…]

Photo credit: Peter Kleinhenz

News Articles of Interest

Florida's water pollution crisis is reaching a breaking point, and the race to pass comprehensive legislation to fix our statewide problems is moving as slow as the environmental catastrophe unfolding in our bays, rivers, natural springs, and lagoons every day.

The question concerned citizens, charter boat captains, some politicians, and environmentalists are asking? How many tons of dead fish, how many manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, and majestic tarpons do we have to clean up before Florida implements a systemic change from the top down.

Everyone who lives in Florida or visits Florida is part of the problem. No person is less innocent or guilty than the other, and scientists hope that we recognize and fix the problem; before it's too late. [Read more…]

Photo credit: Michael Paluska, ABC Action News - WFTS Tampa Bay

75 years ago, if you wanted a cup of coffee or a bite to eat, you went to a restaurant or diner, sat down and got served your coffee in a porcelain mug and ate off a china plate. There were no litter bins on the street because there wasn't much litter. It was pretty much a closed, circular system where the restaurant owner sold you food or coffee and kind of rented you the vessel you ate or drank from.

Soft drinks like Coke and hard drinks like beer were made and distributed locally because bottles were expensive and heavy so they were collected, washed and refilled, but most importantly, transportation was slow and expensive. It was circular, with the producer taking responsibility for the product and its packaging, but circles operate most efficiently when they are smaller. So there were bottlers and breweries and dairies in every small city and town.

Milk and some foods worked the same way; milk came in bottles and was better fresh, so it was delivered by the milkman right to your door. If you were likely to be out, there were milk-boxes built right into the side walls of houses, an idea that would work well today for Amazon deliveries. This was what life was like; local businesses run by local people, serving a local market. [Read more…]

Jason Gulley, a geology professor at the University of South Florida, often found himself inside caves below the surface of glaciers in Greenland or Nepal, exploring how melting ice affects rising seas.

When the pandemic shut down his travels, he shifted his attention to caves in his own backyard. Instead of rappelling a few hundred feet down vertical shafts in splintering ice, he swims deep inside underwater caverns in the porous limestone of the giant Floridan aquifer to document their failing health.

Springs are formed when outcrops of the limestone aquifer, which lies beneath the ground, rise above the surface and groundwater emerges, creating cool, clear pools and rivers brimming with aquatic plants and animals. The springs have been in trouble for decades, fouled by pollutants from agricultural runoff and sewage leakage and overdrawn to provide drinking water to 90 percent of Florida’s 22 million residents. [Read more…]

How To: Sea Kayaking

In this video I want to show you, what is by far the most important secret in sea kayaking. It’s the key to quickly developing the skills to be a confident kayaker with peace of mind, in all kinds of conditions.

Click here for video.

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