Way Down Upon the Suwannee River

By far, my favorite kayaking experience was on the Suwannee River. I have no hope of describing the river with either these stale pictures or words. You would have to ask me in person, so I could grab your wrist, lean forward and feverishly tell you how intensely beautiful it was.

The Suwannee is a very slow wide river with water so black that it seems to have no color at all except what it reflects from the banks and the sky. This made any section of water seem a different color than the last. The current is so slow that when I stopped paddling sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was moving at all and in fact after paddling upstream for four hours, I leaned back in my kayak and read a book on the float back downstream. The banks change from short carved sandstone cliffs, to thick sandy beaches, to woody areas where huge gnarled roots cover the entire embankment and cypress knees raise four feet into the air. In the center of the river, floating just above the surface, the air is the freshest I’ve ever breathed.

Suwannee River State Park is situated at the convergence of the slow Suwannee River and the swifter Withlacoochee River and I enjoyed struggling to paddle just a short ways up the Withlacoochee where I grabbed onto a rope swing and held on against the current, making the water boil under my kayak. The land portion of the park is largely uninteresting, but the river far makes up for it and it winds through a succession of parks so even after paddling one way for four hours, I saw almost no houses or people.

 

I kayaked on the Suwannee for four days, but my favorite trip was on a foggy morning, a few feet from the shore among some weeds there were dozens and dozens of spiderwebs covered in dew suspended over and reflected in the black water below. Low light, the current, the wobbliness of a kayak did not make for good photography conditions, but I snapped a few photos. The spiderwebs were far more amazing than they look here.  I’ve been avoiding writing this entry for a while now and, the truth is, I don’t even feel like trying.  I can’t describe it for what it was, that river.  Just go there.

Other photos are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90538&id=535168447&l=2c9f0

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[bill richards]

If you liked the Suwannee by yourself, try it with 150 of your new closest friends. Next month we conduct our second Spring Paddle Florida. Please visit www.paddleflorida.org for more information.

bill richards
paddle florida