Swimming with the manatees

In 2009, we swam with the manatees with American Pro Diving Center in Dunnellon, Florida, a company with a reputation for promoting a strong environmental ethic. Manatees are an endangered and protected animal. They are mammals and prefer vegetation, often eating up to 15% of their body weight daily. They average 10 feet long and 1,000 pounds, which includes very little fat. An adult manatee spends as much as 8 hours a day eating and the remainder of the day resting or traveling. The are docile, slow, easy-going animals, with nicknames such as "gentle giant" and "sea cow," and they winter in coastal areas in Florida and southern Georgia. They especially prefer the slow-moving rivers and shallow coves and bays where there are warm springs (72 degree water) and lush sea grass beds, and our guide found a number of them in a spring in Kings Bay this morning. This is one of only a few places that permit you to get into the water with them and pet them as we did, wearing wet suits, snorkels, and face masks...

They have adorable faces...

...and sociable traits which leads them to approach you. Many even like your touch on their backs ( thick and wrinkled skin often with growths of algae on them). Several also rolled over and presented their stomachs for petting, and that skin is softer and finer. Forelimb flippers act like arms that allow them to maneuver, to "walk" in shallow water, and to scoop food to their flexible, grasping lips, while a powerful, flat tail propels their massive bodies across the water.

Since they are so trusting and friendly, they are easy targets for those out to do harm to them and also susceptible to propellers of motor craft. Many manatees have numerous scars from prop blades and death rates are high from speeding boats. Therefore, manatee zones are well marked and idle speeds enforced rigorously. Able to hold their breath for up to 15 minutes while resting, manatees have huge lungs that exchange 98% of their contents in one breath. Their nostrils, located on top of their faces for easy breathing, have tight-fitting flaps that keep the water out when they're submerged. Gushes of strong exhalation at the water surface reveal the manatees' presence.

We swam with them for 75 minutes. The air temperature at 8am was only around 50 degrees, but the water in springs in 72 degrees and the dry suits kept us warm. This activity is one of the highlights of this trip!

Swamps

Swamps are interesting and beautiful places to explore by canoe or kayak, and when I found one in my home state of Illinois, I couldn't resist experiencing it. Totaling 14,961 acres in far southern Illinois, the Cache River State Natural Area is a floodplain carved long ago by glacial melt off. The glaciers stopped just before what is now the Shawnee National Forest, thus creating its lovely hills and rock formations, and when they melted, the Ohio River adopted its current course and the Cache River meandered across rich and vast wetlands.

 The cypress trees are one of the outstanding natural features which developed here. Their flared bases (called buttresses) can exceed 40 feet in circumference, and many are over 1000 years old!

Tupelo trees are also prevalent here...

The Okefenokee Swamp straddles the Georgia-Florida border and is a National Wildlife Preserve covering 396,000 acres and is a designated national wilderness area. I've entered the swamp from all three entrances and paddled and hiked here.

 I also paddled the cypress swamp of Texas' Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge and also Armand Bayou, enjoying the scenery and abundant wildlife of the cypress wonderland. 

We also visited Houston Audubon Society's Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary with roseate spoonbills and great white herons as well as cormorants, white ibis, and others

Sparkleberry Swamp (also known as Rimini Swamp for the nearby town) and Stump Hole Swamp were the domain of General Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" of the Revolutionary War.

Congaree National Park is in central South Carolina and was created as the Congaree Swamp National Monument. Its 24,000 acres are not technically a swamp but rather a remnant old growth floodplain forest and the name honors the local Congaree Indians. This area was also home to the legendary Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox."

Audubon Society's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary (Florida) conserves 13,000 magnificent acres, protecting fragile 500-year-old bald cypress trees and providing habitat for migratory and permanent wildlife as well as strangler figs, native grasses, pond apple and red maple trees, and the seasonal ghost orchid plant.

This off-trail slog through the swamp of Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park in Florida entailed 90 minutes of hiking in water up to waist deep in search of elusive orchids and other plants and whatever else caught our attention in this unique eco-system.

Florida's East River near Big Cypress Preserve where our paddling skills were challenged by the narrow, twisting tunnels of mangrove, often barely wider than the kayaks, but a truly beautiful place to boat. Herons, egrets, jumping mullet fish, and even a swimming alligator all enthralled us as we plied the waters.

Twice while biking Georgia's Jekyll Island I encountered this guy was alongside the trail as the trail wends through a bit of a wetlands area...

Building Bridges in the Wilderness

Trail construction projects sometimes entail bridge construction, and though daunting at times, it is fun, and the finished project engenders pride in a job well done as well as the knowledge that hikers now have an easier and safer water crossing available to them. Of my 35+ trail projects, these six have involved bridge construction.

My first such project was in 1999 in Utah's Manti-LaSal National Forest's eastern slope and this was what we encountered...

At the end of the week, this is what hikers now have available...

In 2001 we were working with the Colorado Trail Foundation on re-routing the trail from the main street through town up onto the mountainside above Copper Mountain ski resort. In other words, the new trail went through a wooded area, across a ski slope, through another wooded area and across another ski slope, etc. One area was a wetland, so to preserve the ecology of the wetland and give hikers a dry trail, we built a bridge over the creek and raised the approaches up above the wetlands...

In 2003, we helped convert an old railroad trestle into a bridge over the Wateree Swamp for South Carolina's Palmetto Trail...

In 2004, we helped the Florida Trail Association build a 32 foot long bridge over an 11 foot  deep ravine which flooded every time the adjacent Suwannee River flooded in the Osceola National Forest...

In 2006 we helped re-route a mile of South Carolina's Palmetto Trail in the Francis Marion National Forest off private land and onto forest service land. One small creek was going to be bridged with a few fallen tree trunks to balance across, but we told the ranger we could do better, and we did...

In 2010, it was back to Utah's Manti-LaSal National Forest on the western side of the mountain to help hikers cross this creek...

...and this is what we constructed...

In 2011, the North Country Trail Association needed help constructing a 4000 foot long boardwalk through the Sterling Marsh wetland area in Michigan's Manistee National Forest...

We even built a rest area...

...and also a bridge over a creek...

All these bridges required lots of hard labor and teamwork, but I think the results speak for themselves! So next time you go hiking, if you come upon a bridge, mumble a quick "thank you" to the crew that built it!

50th Anniversary of Earth Day

In 1970, as a 25-year-old graduate student, Denis Hayes, organized the first Earth Day. The resounding success of that event, which brought out 20 million Americans — 10 percent of the United States population at the time — helped spark the modern environmental movement.

The decade that followed saw some of America’s most popular and powerful environmental legislation: updates to the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Fifty years later, we have different environmental challenges, some much larger, most notably global climate change. Despite the existential threat of climate change, some politicians are denying it exists and rolling back environmental protections, failing to live up to the Paris Agreement, and dragging their feet on climate action — solely to make more money as they pollute — with no thought of protecting the Earth for their children and grand-children.

Will there be an Earth Day in another 50 years? Will there still be a viable Earth that supports life?