Still, to me, the quetion was not why someone would want to camp in the
Okefenokee in southern Georgia just across the Florida border, but why
wouldn't they? It would be the experience of a lifetime, a wilderness
journey never to be forgotten, and likely to the first of many treasured
trips back.

In previous explorations through the swamp, I had used motor boats and
day long canoe trips to various reaches. There were areas, like The
Narrows, where the natural splendor was so startling none of my
companions spoke when passing through it. In the eastern marshes of the
swamp, called "prairies" locally, there were vast expanses of clouds
reflected on waters dark from peat, a reverse sky, beauty stretching in
all directions. On the western edge, twisty waterways led through giant
gnarled cypress of fantastic shapes. There were islands in the swamp,
too, wild places where bears lived on slightly elevated former dunes.
There was also everywhere a feeling of the swamp's wild character which
seeped in and captivated. The swamp seemed more than the sum of its
various parts, each wondrous in itself. There was an essence to the
Okefenokee, a wild spirit so tangible at times it felt like you could
reach out and touch it. It was not just the teeming alligators, many of
them behemoths, nor was it the rarely seen black bears. It was the
little things too, a plant called "never wet," with yellow flowers
dominating the prairies in season, and insect-carnivorous pitcher
plants, bladderworts, and tiny wild orchids. At times, when all was
silent, and you closed your eyes, it as if you could feel the cypress
growing and look through the eyes of the countless little and big
creatures in the waters and flying above it.

We planned a three day trip, starting west on the Suwannee Canal, built
with the intention of draining the swamp, then used for lumbering it. We
would turn west into Chase Prairie, camp on Round Top Platform the first
night, and proceed the second day to Floyds Island where we would camp
in an old hunting cabin. The third day we would paddle through Middle
Fork Run and Minnies Lake into Billys Lake, areas of tall cypress,
exiting out at Stephen Foster State Park, just across the Florida line
in Georgia north of Lake City.

     Anxiety

Not that I was without neurosis.

The night before our journey, we dined in St. Marys, Georgia, and joked
that the condemned had a hearty meal. There were eight:  Gerry Bishop
and Pam Bartlett from Virginia, Lisa Dupar and Jonathan Zimmer from
Seattle, photographer Pete Carmichael from Sarasota, guide Ken Kramer
from Tampa, Chip Campbell from Okefenokee Adventures, and myself.
Lisa and I were probably the least experienced campers, perhaps neither
of us spending a night before in a great wilderness. Later Lisa told me
she had never canoed any distance, much less departed on what might seem
to the novice a three-day death march. Possibly Lisa, the founder and
owner of a successful catering business, felt as much apprehension the
night before departure as I did. I'd like to think there was someone as
apprehensive as I was.

The last time I had camped was in Europe beneath the Alps. I had an
Apache with me then, a skilled outdoors man named Pacheo, who anchored
our tent with such finesse that in the morning, after a great storm was
trapped below the snowy mountain tops in the valley where we slept, our
tent was the only one of five still standing. Our wet companions had
taken refuge in the dug-out of a baseball diamond at a nearby German rod
and gun club. I vowed never to go camping again without an Apache
companion, and since there were few if any Apaches easily found in
Florida or Georgia, I had escaped sleeping on anything but a mattress
for a long time.

Other members of our party were much more experienced at camping. As a
defender of the outdoors and an editor of Ranger Rick Magazine, Gerry
Bishop had camped frequently in wilderness, as had   Pam Bartlett. I had
met both in 2000 when we hiked the Florida Trail at St. Marks. Pam was
full of wonder at the natural marvels around us on the hike and saw her
first wild turkey then. Jonathan Zimmer, Lisa's husband, was in
fantastic shape, looking about ready to hike up the side of a mountain,
whereas I looked like I had already tried that and failed (a long time
ago). Both Jonathan and Pete Carmichael, her father, had reputations as
masters of the wilds, Pete more in Costa Rica than elsewhere, and
Jonathan out west, where there are mountains and deserts.

Two of our group were experienced Okefenokee hands. Ken Kramer had
camped there the first time more than twenty years ago. Both as a guide
and for love of it, Ken paddles canoes many miles per week, and camps
regularly. Chip Campbell, the leader of our expedition, owns Okefenokee
Adventures along with his wife Joy. Their company partners with the US
Fish and Wildlife Service to provide visitor services at the east
entrance to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, and Chip takes visitors
out into the swamp almost daily.

What were Lisa and I doing among this crowd?

Being a writer is a blessing and curse. It means your imagination works
overtime about everything that could go wrong. Most of the night before
the journey, I tossed and turned, thinking maybe I should invent some
pretext in the morning to stay on dry land. I remembered that a European
tourist, lost on Marco Island some years back, had wandered about the
wilds - and died. I imagined my brain cells short-circuiting. I had
visions of Tim freaking out, leaping from the canoe, running off madly
into the swamp. To die.

Other fears? Yes, there were a few, some more reasonable, like
sun-stroke and heat exhaustion. Even though Okefenokee black bears, like
their Florida cousins, are incredibly shy, I had come up with a new
far-fetched fear. I asked my veterinarian if bears got rabies. "They're
mammals, right?" he reassured me. Other potential bites came from
insects, particularly mosquitoes and yellow flies. Not to mention
gators.

Just the week before, Pete Carmichael and I had canoed the trail to
Mizell Prairie and had an adrenaline moment. Approaching Mizell
Platform, I was startled when an enormous gator head, jaws open,
exploded out of the water near where I had just stroked the paddle. This
gator then banged around on the bottom of our canoe for a few
heart-racing seconds, rocking the boat in the process. We paddled to the
platform, climbed out onto it, and what did we see? but the gator
swimming slowly toward the platform, apparently pursuing. This was not
as ominous as it seemed. We had merely startled the alligator, and it
was curious, and somewhat habituated to humans from living around a
platform Homo sapiens visited regularly.

Despite rational thought, on the morning of our trek, my worries were
cranked up and fueled by caffeine. That I showed up at Okefenokee
Adventures may have had more to do with not losing face in front of
comrades I admired so highly than any conquest over irrational fears.
Before we left, we joked this was the last time the eight of us would
want to be so close together for three days.

     Gator World

As we canoed out the Suwannee Canal on a 24.5-mile paddle lasting three
days, there was an amusing diversion. A dragonfly hooked onto Pete
Carmichael's nose and hung on to the proboscis for about twelve minutes
by my watch. Other than that, the way to Chase Prairie was dominated by
alligators mating and fighting.

Within the first mile of the Suwannee Canal, we had a mystery. A gator
had something dead pushed up under vegetation in an opening through the
canal banks. What was it? At first we thought it was a deer or a hog.
Chip Campbell paddled our canoe closer to get a look. The gator, which
submerged at our approach, was consuming a fellow alligator, how it died
undetermined, maybe from old age.

Other gators lay along our path, usually submerging when we approached.
Then at midday, when we stopped to have lunch at Coffee Bay Shelter, a
halfway point on that day's journey, we watched One-eyed Jack who bobbed
in the water and watched us back. It is an experience to consume your
midday meal while being watched by a creature able to consume you.
One-eyed Jack looked to be a 12 foot long gator. The blind eye may have
been inflicted by a panicky fisherman or tourist when One-eyed Jack came
too close for comfort. Chip Campbell believes One-eyed Jack eats
raccoons attracted to the shelter by human scrapes. If Chip is right, it
must be quite a sight, One-eyed Jack erupting from the water to latch
his jaws shut about a raccoon who strayed to close to the edge.

Three times while we had lunch, a smaller gator came to take One-eyed
Jack's spot. Smaller meant about seven feet in length. Each time,
One-eyed Jack turned his stare from us and raced like a torpedo in the
direction of the intruder, sending the smaller, weaker animal into
flight.

Despite the prolific numbers of alligators in the refuge, and the
habituation to humans by those near the platforms and shelters, there
have been no fatal alligator attacks in the history of the refuge. In
part this safety record is because wild gators in the Okefenokee have
learned to fear humans. Swamp-dwelling Crackers (called swampers), who
arrived in the 1800s, killed alligators in legendary quantities into the
middle of the 20th Century. In the early days of the refuge, poaching of
gators was frequent. Managers at the refuge also keep a close eye on the
gators by platforms. If a gator becomes too aggressive, wildlife
officers transport it a distance away, and if the gator returns,
sometimes they shoot it. One-eyed Jack was on a watch list, but thus far
he was not a busted gator.

By mid-afternoon, we turned north into Chase Prairie. Two generations
ago, swampers camped on nearby Round Top, a soggy island of peat and
pines the swampers termed a "house." From there, they hunted, chasing
bear and deer (and anything else that would run) out into the open
waters of the prairie where they shot the fleeing creatures down from
poled boats. From the chase of the hunt, comes the name Chase Prairie,
in which Round Top Platform stands.

Chase Prairie provided an astounding visual experience, with vistas of
tree islands and gator holes, brilliant sunrises and sunsets, and
morning fogs. The prairie was an incredible auditory experience too,
with sandhill cranes and other birds calling by day. When night came, I
laughed myself to sleep at the incessant babble of the mating frogs. How
could anyone sleep in this din? I kept thinking of trying to sleep to
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony's Ode to Joy.

There was a frog orchestra and chorus made up of thousands of
individuals of at least three species. First the pig frogs honked with
their deep base grunts, followed by the milder songs of the cricket
frogs. They were joined by green tree frogs, whose chorus seemed to wake
me each time it re-started. The frogs were all saying, "Here I am, find
me," to other mating frogs, but they were at times found by the feeding
gators.

Before sunset, the alligators fought and mated in front of our
platform, and in the morning, from unseen locations, they bellowed. It
was like the choir from Jurassic Park.

The gators around the platform were waiting for us to drop something,
perhaps food. One gator came rushing to the surface when one of our
party, Pete Carmichael, washed his hands. One of us spit, and an
alligator rushed toward the splat on the water. Water from washing out
dishes accidentally seeped off the platform, and here came the gators
again.

     Spooky

Jonathan and Lisa turned back on the morning of the second day,
reducing our party to six. Sleeping on the platform had hurt Lisa's
back. I was now the least experience camper of the lot. I can understand
how her back, suffering from previous injuries, might feel. Despite an
air mattress and a sleeping bag, it felt like sleeping on a rock inside
my tent.

That day we traveled less than five miles to Floyds Island. At first,
we were in open prairie, but then we moved into tight confines, passing
old lumbering trams on a path which had been blasted by dynamite.
Floyd was an Indian hunter who led several hundred men into the swamp
in search of Native Americans who feuded with settlers on its edges
before the Civil War. There is one report he killed an old invalid
Indian, but no others. He burned down their abandoned village on Floyds
Island, and for this pyromania, he has been rewarded in history by
having this island named in his honor. Go figure.

Saner people travel the swamp in colder months, not when things are
warming up. Some of Floyds' soldiers had abandoned the chase during
warmer months. The primary reasons were evident as we paddled up onto
Floyds Island, across which we had to portage. Mosquitoes and yellow
flies descended upon us, and those of us who had them, put on bug hats,
hats with mosquito netting. In addition, I wore a ventilated long-sleeve
outdoor shirt, blue jeans, and mosquito gloves. All that clothing made
things unbearably hot at times, but bite free.

Since the heat from all these clothes had cooked me, on Floyds Island,
behind the cabin, I did the unthinkable. I stripped down and offended
the wilderness. I also poured over myself half a gallon of shocking cold
water. I washed with soap, and then I dumped a whole gallon jug over me.
I was cool, at least for the moment. The night before in the tent on the
platform it was like roasting in your own juices.

Into the cabin, the bugs would not come. We pondered why, concluding it
was the smoky smell within the cabin from years of log fires made by
winter campers.

That night, two very weird things happened on Floyds Island. While Chip
Campbell was warming up jumbalaya over the portable stove, he said, "Do
you hear that?" and I did hear it. It was the tinny sound of a bell.

"What is it?" I asked Chip.

"Well, it's just kind of a ghost story, and I don't remember it, but it
has something to do with a bell. There it goes again. Do you hear it?"
I did hear it, and I also saw some deer wandering by and fire flies,
which I pointed out to my companions.

"I think it's just some kind of insect or bird," Chip added.
Great, I thought, now I have to worry about ghosts besides the bugs,
gators, heat stroke, and potentially rabid bears. No camping trip, of
course, would be complete without ghost stories, I thought, and we had
found ours. Then, when we turned in, there was another weird event.
It looked as if a tall person with a flashlight was walking in the
woods about fifty feet outside the window of my room in the cabin. I
looked out the side window to where Gerry and Pam Bishop had decided to
stay in a tent, and I could see their outlines inside, lights off. Chip
Campbell was in the room behind mine, moving around, readying himself
for bed. Ken Kramer was sleeping in his dark tent, also electing for the
ground - his feet were touching his tent walls. It must be Pete
Carmichael, I thought, wandering around with a light like a coal miner
uses to search for spiders and insects to photograph. Only later did we
find out that Pete was in his room sound asleep. Six of us accounted
for, who was carrying the light miles from anywhere in the center of the
swamp?

A mystery had passed by us, and we had not known it had until it was
gone.

    Reflections Past Midnight

In the city, I almost never see the stars, three trimesters of
astronomy wasted. I do watch CNN ticker-tape news, where they have
reduced me to a news reader, and PBS, then grab a book and a drink, and
sleep until morning, when the work cycle begins again, and I am chained
to the computer. During my normal day, I am flooded with information,
harassed by phone solicitors, salesmen knocking on my door, and spam.
Only when I jog, do I realize it is hot or cold outside, rainy or sunny,
and when my life is risked, it is usually on the city's crammed streets
were cars are after me like great mechanical cheetahs operated by people
in a great hurry.

Not so in the Okefenokee, where the wilderness is vast, and the only
intrusion may be other randomly encountered human beings. Despite fears,
it was probably safer than at home with its burglar alarm. Here I was
slipping back in tune with the rhythm of the moon, stars, and sun, and I
heard natural things again, the voice of the owl, the call of bobwhite,
the frogs. I no longer cared whether the stock market had moved up or
down, and I no longer had to listen to the latest spiel on weapons of
mass destruction. Cellular phones (and stupid me, I had brought mine)
would not work here. There was no air-conditioning to abate midnight
connection to the heat of the season.

Chip Campbell, who brought me here, had given me a great gift. I was
momentarily reconnected to the real world, not the human one, but the
wilderness which used to exist and still does in special saved places,
like the almost 700 square miles of the Okefenokee. It occurred to me
that this was the finest gift anyone had given me in many years, and
Chip had bestowed it without realizing it fully. It is his greatest
passion, the Okefenokee Swamp, a place where he spent his honeymoon and
where he wants his ashes scattered. In fact, in some way or other, I
owed this gift to all my companions.

Past midnight, I woke because I could hear little feet in my room. I
flicked on my flashlight and looked at very cute mice, which scurried
away frightened by the light. Then I heard the raccoons on the porch,
looking for food, three of them at least, all very fat, one as big as a
large dog, and they did not care if I shinned my light on them or not,
he-coons like Lawton Chiles. Armadillo rummaged beneath my room,
raccoons ran over the roof, mice chattered outside my door. Now I was
awake, telling the time again by the moonset, 2 AM. I was becoming
confident I would live to finish the journey.

     We Survive

The next day we pushed off Floyds Island, after removing dozens of
daddy long legs from the canoes, going through a narrow tunnel of
vegetation hewn from the wilderness. We argued over whether daddy long
legs would bite or not. Gerry Bishop and Pam Barlettt said no. Pete
Carmichael said they sure had the fangs. I relayed the story of a
paddling friend from Milton, Florida, who said one had wounded her on
the leg, and it took months for the wound to recover. Meanwhile, we wore
bug hats out the twisting canoe path to keep off the yellow flies and
mosquitoes, and daddy longs legs climbed outside my netting and scurried
over my face.

We traveled 8.5 miles that day, out onto an enormous area of pond
cypress known as Middle Fork Run. At many turns, Chip Campbell slowed
down the canoe we shared so we could hear the awed expressions at the
beauty before us from paddlers following behind.

We passed through an open stream-like area, known as Minnies Lake,
where cypress stood in all manners of their gnarled and twisted
potential shapes.

Then it was through an area known as Pinball Alley, a confined twisty
path where the cypress showed signs of being struck by boats.

Twice we pulled to the side and let boats pass us.

Just before we burst into Billys Lake, we were greeted by Joy Campbell,
who paddled out to meet us with cold Gatorade, Saint Joy of the Cold
Drink, since we had nothing even luke warm for the past two days after
the ice in our coolers melted.

The marvels were not over. Soaring overhead to greet us were
swallow-tail kites. Not two or three, but seven. It is a fortunate thing
to see a single swallow-tail kite. Three is an amazing event. We all
paused, for what we were witnessing was almost unheard of.

What did I have when I left the swamp at Stephen Foster? First, the
memory of a trip, including some mysteries and incredible experiences,
and the songs of frogs going about in my head. Second, a three day
growth of beard, the need for water and soap, and a sunburned forehead.
Most importantly, however, was what I had felt and seen as an experience
of swamp gestalt.

It was a wilderness, and I didn't live in it. It tolerated me, and let
me pass through, as it tolerated us all. We were not of it, although
Chip and Ken came close to being a part of it. We were alien invaders,
and strangely, we needed the swamp, but it did not need us.

Despite attempts to drain the swamp, lumber it empty, mine peat out of
it, build railroads and highways over and through it, and most recently
to mine titanium oxide alongside it, the Okefenokee prevails. The
Okefenokee is tough and speaks to the ability of nature to spring back
from human assaults. There are places within it which are impenetrable,
and this too is important. A world without wilderness or places man can
not go would be a poorer world.


It is possible to leave our cities and reach the various portals to the
Okefenokee within 3.25 from I-75 and Fletcher Avenue in Tampa or 4.25
hours from I-75 and Bee Ridge in Sarasota.
Stephen Foster State Park (912-637-5274) is a 17-mile drive from US-441
north of Lake City in Georgia. Cabins can be rented and primitive
campsites are available. There are canoe and boat rentals, as well as a
tour boat.

Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (912-496-7836)  and Okefenokee
Adventures (912-496-7156) are located on SR-121 north of McClenny,
Florida. This is where the Suwannee Canal is located and Chip and Joy
Campbell have their business. Tours are led into the swamp daily, canoes
and boats can be rented, and overnight primitive camping trips
organized.

Okefenokee Swamp Park (912-263-0583) is located in Waycross, Georgia,
on US-1. It is a terrific place for explorations, particularly for kids,
with its tram rides, petting zoo, and Oscar, a giant alligator.


Tim Ohr is the author of a number of books, including FLORIDA'S FABULOUS
NATURAL PLACES. His articles have appeared in many magazines. He is at
work with Pete Carmichael and Chip Campbell on a book about the great
Okefenokee Swamp.