We Are Not Alone

On a spring night, we encamped on a wooden platform in the heart of the vast Okefenokee Swamp. We kept time by the moon and the stars, fell asleep to the songs of frogs and woke when a snacking alligator beneath us, with a tremendous splash, sent an amphibian to his maker. That night, a group of eight human beings was alone in Chase Prairie, huddled in tents on Round Top Platform in the Okefenokee Swamp.

The reaction from friends on learning that I was camping in the great Okefenokee Swamp was universal and came in a series of four questions, usually said in one phrase. Did I have insurance? What about the mosquitoes? Was I out of my mind? And why? It should also be admitted that in the past five years, I had earned a reputation for camping in the Holiday Inn, complete with MTV, iced drinks and a thing we take for granted, called air-conditioning, the Eighth Wonder of the Modern World.

Still, to me, the question 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 the first of many treasured trips.

In previous explorations through the swamp, I had used motor boats and daylong canoe trips to various reaches. There were areas, like The Narrows, where the natural splendor was so startling that none of my companions spoke when passing through them. 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 with beauty stretching in all directions. On the western edge, twisty waterways led through giant gnarled cypress of fantastic shapes. There also were islands in the swamp, wild places where bears lived on slightly elevated former dunes.

There was a ubiquitous feeling of the swamp's wild character that 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, that 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 was as if you could feel the cypress growing and see through the eyes of the countless little and big creatures swimming through the water or 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 north 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 with splendid areas of tall cypress. And finally we would exit at Stephen Foster State Park just above the Florida line north of Lake City.

AnxietyNot that I was without neurosis.

The night before our journey, we dined in St. Marys, Ga., 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 like a three-day death march. Possibly Lisa, the founder and owner of a successful catering business in Seattle, felt as much apprehension the night before departure as I did. At least I'd like to think there was someone as apprehensive as I.

The last time I had camped was in Europe beneath the Alps. An Apache friend accompanied me then, a skilled outdoorsman named Pacheo. He had anchored our tent with such finesse that in the morning, after a great storm was trapped below the snowy mountaintops in the valley where we slept, our tent was the only one of five still standing. Our wet companions had taken refuge in the dugout 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 had camped frequently in wilderness, as had his fellow Virginian Pam. 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 even saw her first wild turkey. Jonathan, 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, Pam's 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 members of our group were experienced Okefenokee hands. Ken, the guide from Tampa, had camped there for the first time more than 20 years ago. Both as a guide and for the love of it, Ken paddles canoes many miles per week and camps regularly. And Chip, the leader of our expedition, owns Okefenokee Adventures along with his wife Joy. Chip takes visitors out into the swamp almost daily. Additionally, their company partners with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to provide visitor services at the east entrance to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

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 that 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 myself freaking out, leaping from the canoe and 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 said. 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 and 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? The gator swimming slowly toward the platform, apparently pursuing. This was not as ominous as it seemed. We had merely startled the alligator. It was curious and somewhat habituated to humans from living around a platform that 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 than any conquest over irrational fears.

Before we left, we joked that this was the last time the eight of us would want to be so close together for three days.

Gator WorldAs we started the trip, 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 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 a gator named 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 believes One-eyed Jack eats raccoons attracted to the shelter by human scraps. 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 too close to the edge.

Three times while we had lunch, a smaller gator came to take One-eyed Jack's spot. Smaller meant about 7 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, 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 bass 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 restarted. The frogs were all saying, "Here I am, find me," to other mating frogs, but they were instead, 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 a 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 Pete washed his hands. Another 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 the gators came again.

SpookyJonathan 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 experienced 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 5 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 that had been blasted by dynamite.

Floyds Island was named for 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 Floyd's 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. 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.

The bugs would not come into the cabin. We pondered why and concluded that 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 was warming jambalaya 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 fireflies, 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 50 feet outside the window of my room in the cabin. I looked out the side window to where Gerry and Pam had decided to stay in a tent, and I could see their outlines inside, lights off. Chip was in the room behind mine, moving around, readying himself for bed. Ken was sleeping in his dark tent, also electing for the ground — his feet were touching his tent walls. It must be Pete, 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. With 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 MidnightIn 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 I 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, door-to-door salesmen 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 where 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 my fears, it was probably safer than my 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 the midnight connection to the heat of the season.

Chip, 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. The Okefenokee Swamp is his greatest passion, 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. There were three of them at least, all very fat, one as big as a large dog, and they did not care if I shined my light on them or not. 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. By 2 a.m. I was becoming confident I would live to finish the journey.

We SurviveThe next day we pushed off Floyds Island, after removing dozens of daddy longlegs from the canoes. Going through a narrow tunnel of vegetation hewn from the wilderness, we argued over whether daddy longlegs would bite or not. Gerry and Pam said no. Pete said they sure had the fangs. I relayed the story of a paddling friend from Milton, Fla., who said one had wounded her on the leg and that 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 longlegs 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 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. She became Saint Joy of the Cold Drink since we had had nothing even lukewarm 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 that are impenetrable, and this too is important. A world without wilderness or places man cannot go would be a poorer world.

Tim Ohr is the author of a number of books, including FLORIDA'S FABULOUS NATURAL PLACES. His most recent cover story for us was an exploration of phosphate mining proposed for Horse Creek southeast of Tampa. He is at work with Pete Carmichael and Chip Campbell on a book about the great Okefenokee Swamp.

This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2003.