Outdoors
Published: Feb 5, 2007
NUTALL RISE - It is a world steeped in the dawn of human history. Riddled with disappearing rivers and mysterious portals to the netherworld, it feels alive with the ghosts of a Paleolithic past. Here the earth swallows time in great blackwater gulps, entombing man and mastodon alike. These are the Aucilla Sinks, the El Dorado of archeologists and geologists from the world over for hikers on the Florida National Scenic Trail.
It is a dirt road that one must follow north from U.S. 98. Dump trucks, loaded heavy with dolomite, rumble past with ground-shaking regularity. To the hiker making that northbound trek along Powell Hammock Road, the westbound turn into the Aucilla Wildlife Management Area can't come soon enough.
When finally it does, one of the great joys of hiking the Florida Trail overtakes the senses. The cacophony of traffic vanishes into the wake of a measured pace on the wet, sandy earth. Cardinals forage busily in the bare winter forest. Their flashy swoops across the road accompanied by the hollow staccato of redheaded woodpeckers hammering away at their breakfasts.
Such a scene is typical on a trail morning in the wilderness. But on the Aucilla River section of the Florida National Scenic Trail, it's just window dressing. A deeper wander into this forest reveals a looking glass into Florida's antediluvian past. For here lies the first gaping mystery of the Aucilla River sinks.
Its sheer limestone walls are luxuriously coated in deep green moss. Easily 50 feet in diameter, it is as perfectly round as nature can manage. Gripping the velveteen upholstered limestone are the sinewy roots of the trees on its precipice. Their sinewy fingers cling desperately for purchase, lest they become yet another bleached derelict, broken and decaying in the sinkhole's maw.
The trail begins in earnest here. As it winds toward the Aucilla River, outcroppings of limestone bedrock emerge from the sand to offer short lengths of prehistoric pavement. Live oaks, as thick as barrels, break away from the rocky earth. Their limbs rival the width of most trees and the resurrection ferns, nourished by a week of rain, carpet the skyward side of them.
And beneath it all, borne of wetlands and springs north, flows in silence the Aucilla River.
About 13,500 years ago, the first hikers - known as Paleo-Indians - discovered the charms of this extraordinary landscape. They were Native Americans who predated the invention of the hyphen by several millennia. They were citizens of what is now known among archeologists as the Clovis-era, a name derived from a town in New Mexico where first evidence of their existence was discovered by science.
They left much behind to tell of their lives. Researchers have found many artifacts of their hunter-gatherer lifestyle in this area, including the magnificent tools and points napped from the limestone bedrock that offers itself in such abundance here. For a Paleo-Indian, the Aucilla Sinks were the equivalent of a hardware store.
Also found here were ancient shards of pottery, evidence of the rise of our species from its Stone Age beginnings. It should be noted that it is unlawful to remove these artifacts except by special permit. Much of what these places could have told us about ourselves has been lost to vandals and treasure seekers.
Yet, a walk along this trail, as it winds patiently through the thickly wooded surface of Aucilla is remarkably unblemished. This is never more true then when one comes upon the "Now you see it, now you don't" meander of the Aucilla River itself.
The Aucilla River is born from wetlands and springs stretching south from the Georgia line. It begins as a trickle, coursing toward the Gulf of Mexico in strict accordance with the elevation of the land surface. And then, for the first of several times, it is swallowed whole by the earth.
It is a curious sight to see a river disappear against an unyielding limestone cliff. It departs with nary a ripple, returning to the earth that bore it. The trail traces the edges of the river's steep banks, its tread carefully carved to offer a hiker sweeping views of the sponge-like limestone.
The river performs this vanishing act several times. It reappears without warning, unfazed by its subterranean sojourn. There is no bubbling, to white water to betray its intentions. It emerges languidly from pitch-black depths, oozing like cane syrup through a primordial canyon.
Where the banks offer a less steep descent to its flow, the mud bears the signs of virtually every forest creature that depends upon it. The human-like prints of raccoons mingle with the arrow-point hooves of deer. In some places, these are all but obliterated by the unmistakable intrusion of feral hogs. Only a heard of dairy cattle could leave greater evidence of their visit.
The main course of the river runs through a wooded moonscape of smaller sinks, some of them dry, others holding water. Where the water slowly recedes, the cypress trees grow tall, their copper-colored trunks forming smooth columns among clutches of hickory and magnolia.
Each sinkhole is a new world to be explored. It is difficult to keep one's pack on in the Aucilla. The mouths of caves beckon seductively with promises of unexplored darkness, imparting an irresistible urge to abandon trail for an exploratory romp. The hole-riddled walls within the caves carry the texture of sandpaper and are cool and damp to the touch. A deeper probe into the darkness reveals the patient waters of the Aucilla, midnight black and well-digger cold.
It is easy to imagine the first of our kind living in this enchanting environment. There is a plentiful hunt offered by this forest, a tractless supply of fresh water for thirst, and a king's ransom of chert, the flinty component of limestone from which tools are fashioned.
The broken trees lie in shallow pool of organic, tannic water. It is the color of cane syrup, and appears to be possessed of a like viscosity.
Just off the trail, just beyond the double-blaze, they signal to those in the know that the direction of the trail will soon change.
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