Arise at Dead River 
                  - Written and Contributed by Edward C. Woodward      

My house sits on a 50 by 100 foot lot. I have a quaint urban back yard insulated by three neighboring grandfather oaks that attract blue jays, morning doves, and an occasional pair of cardinals amid a backdrop of ever-scampering squirrels. But the city sounds can be distracting: circular saws, axel-challenged delivery trucks, 747s and the industrial surf of swooshing cars on a nearby expressway. I grew up in Florida’s rural panhandle with room to roam, so when the city sounds of Tampa make my grumpy, I head for the woods.

One refuge is Dead River Park, a remote hammock on the Hillsborough River. A state agency acquired the land for flood control in the mid 1960s; the park’s main picnic grounds once housed about 10 modest wood clapboard homes, getaways for middle class Floridians, though a handful were fulltime residents.

During my Dead River walks, I keep a journal.

Though bicycling down the Dead River Park entrance road, driving still determined my pace. Interstates and highways shuttled me from my south Tampa home to the park, about a thirty minute drive northeast within Hillsborough County. But here I was, five minutes removed from my car, bike unloaded and back pack secured, pedaling quickly to reach the river at the expense of the ride. Credit a quiet sensibility within, though, for tugging my conscious as I passed a furry white something dangling in the middle of the road.

“Slow down, city boy!”

“Disclaimer: I’m from the rural panhandle on indefinite sabbatical in Tampa.”

“Then stop thinking the river’s the only thing worth seeing.”
 
“Short-cycled green arrows at backed up intersections are attitude altering.”

“But you’re here, not there. Out here it’s green lights all the time. Look around.”

        
    I scanned the green leaves of live oaks that line this crush-shelled road running about two miles to the Hillsborough River, then I rode back to that furry something that caught my eye, and got off my bike. A white caterpillar dangled from a roadside oak about five feet above the ground. Black tufts ran the length of its body, its face whiskered like a samurai fighting fish. It was seemingly suspended in midair like a trapeze artist. Then it fell. Next, the caterpillar scaled my shoe and crossed the road, well camouflaged by the bleached shells. Soon after, a green caterpillar with a black beaded line the length of its body decided to scale my shoe, too. Apparently I’m a caterpillar whisperer, but I doubt there’s a movie here: a caterpillar’s short life-span saps bonding time and a hoofing scene would take too long. However, this creature’s got an admirable mane:  atop each bead are tufts of hair, mini-Don Kings exploding in green.

        Standing here, three people have passed me. The first two were an older man and woman leaving the park by bike and medical scooter, respectively. The third another bicyclist, probably in his mid-twenties, who passed me on his way in and out during a twenty-minute span, my “progress” in that time about one hundred yards; post-caterpillars I’ve been more in the moment, seeing the details that dictate place. It’s entertaining and inspiring. My thoughts range from reverent to irreverent. Wind-swept oaks creak like rusty-hinged heavy doors. The young bicyclist resembled Jeff Gordon with a thin mustache a la Burt Reynolds circa Smokey and the Bandit (a fine film). He rode a blue Pee Wee Herman bike, free of gears, loud with the clatter of metal and rubber peddled at a high-speed on a hard surface. I rode on, too, and noticed an ironic transition as the woods enveloped me. The collective sound of tiny crickets overcame the high-pitched whine of sixteen-wheelers barreling down nearby U.S. Highway 301. If the woods could wink, they would. Then again, shadows caste are more than good shade. 

        Sabal palms at Dead River are like the popular footwear Crocs: they’re everywhere. In the shadows of oaks trees. Twisting and turning, seeking light and room to grow. Panoramically scanning the riverside picnic grounds, I stopped counting at fifty. But one sabal stood out - in my mind, not at Dead River. In the past year we renovated our house, adding a second story with a landing that overlooked the neighborhood tree tops. For the first time, from a two-story vantage point, I noticed a towering solitary sabal a block away, its backdrop at its peek height the sky and nothing else. Most days when I walked the landing I paused for a moment to enjoy the tree. But recently, I noticed the palm was gone. I stopped and stared. Was I looking in the wrong direction? No, though I hoped that was the case scanning the horizon. I felt robbed. Though it wasn’t on my property, it was part of my panorama. I told my daughter about it, and she asked why it was gone. Good question. Maybe it was diseased. Doubtlessly, it was harvested for swamp cabbage by some urban pioneer; the tree’s “heart” is edible. I won’t know for sure, but we went on a walk soon after and passed the sabal stump, mere inches above the ground. I pointed it out to my daughter. She said she would get me a new one. Ironically, a good answer for a priceless view.

            Leaving Dead River’s picnic area, I followed a foot path wide enough for my bike. The path bordered the Hillsborough River. Smaller, worn paths diverted to the river from the main trail. The ground cover was dense and varied. What’s great about the woods are the weeds, uninhibited growth. It’s bemusing how fertilizer companies can criminalize dandelions and clover: yellow and purple bloom, bad. Green grass, good.   My tangent ended at the river, snapped by the sight of a large oak tree growing at a forty-five degree angle from the bank of the Hillsborough River. It stretched nearly half way across the river, a span of about twenty feet, and beckoned to be climbed. The first set of branches diverted about twenty feet above the trunk, forming a worn seat that it seemed others have sought. I’ll call it the booty tree.

            Resurrection fern, a ubiquitous plant in these woods that appears dead but revives, cloaked the limbs like arm hair. Epiphytes, air plants that thrive on oaks as well, sprouted tufts of gray hair. In some cases, epiphytes lodged themselves where branches diverted from the trunk, sparking in my mind a winning name for an environmentally conscious band: The Arm-Pit Epiphytes.

            Feeling the tree’s aura, I was ready to climb. I snapped the chin strap on my bike helmet, reasoning with flawed logic that, worst case scenario, if I plunged into the river, head butting an alligator with a thin plastic shell might dissuade an attack. I climbed. One foot on the trunk, then another, my hands ahead of me. About six feet up the tree, the water now below me, my cat-like confidence when it comes to climbing things, crashed. I turned shore-bound and leapt to the bank. Though I’d acutely watched my nimble cat Colonel Mustard scale the outer limbs of our neighbor’s live oak to commune with pigeons, my cumbersome climbing skills hadn’t improved. Maybe I needed a pigeon to coax me upward. Maybe I needed nine lives to dismiss losing one. Although certain a second climb would probably end the same way, I tried anyway. A third time, too, just for perseverance sake. Each time I jumped back to the bank, resigned to admire the tree from a gator-free zone.

            But something caught my eye and lifted my spirits: a white and green bungee cord with a black hook anchored in the ground about six feet from the base of the booty tree. Kicking it with my foot, I recalled on my climb seeing what looked like a nail lodged about three feet below the tree’s seat. Clever, running a taught line between the two points to pull oneself upward, I supposed.

            Back on the path, I wove through the woods about ten minutes. But I wanted to see more than the trail ahead. So I dropped my bike and started walking through ankle-high underbrush. I forgot my helmet was on, but absentmindedness has its benefits: I walked into a spider web. Abruptly, I jumped back. Though alone, my reaction embarrassed me: I grew up tromping through the woods of Gadsden County, and just a few years ago spent a summer and fall immersed in state parks during a stint with AmeriCorps and the Florida Park Service. But then I recalled the size of the spiders I encountered as a kid: Twix-sized golden-silk spiders known to us as banana spiders that, though not poisonous, I’d always heard packed quite a bite. At age thirty-four I was in no hurry to experience knowingly my first spider bite. Being embarrassed I could live with.

            I decided to turn back while the path was still in sight. Dead River was new to me, but getting lost wasn’t; I’d tried finding my way from a mountain once and ended up five miles or so off course. A better option was to follow old ditches off the park entrance road; a good way in the woods to lose oneself without getting lost.

            I pedaled back towards the park entrance, stopping at the river one more time. My eyes fell on a girth-gifted gator about eight feet long, partially submerged snout to hind legs in a few inches of water, his tail hidden behind a clump of trees and vines. He claimed this stretch of the Hillsborough vacated by a “twelve-something” foot gator Dead River Park Ranger Jack Coleman helped trap. That gator had grown too comfortable with park-goers, Jack said. He crossed the river once when a child neared the bank. Before that he’d snatched a dog. 

         Finding a solitary sabal palm with a blue sky backdrop and scattered clouds is a fresh find every time. It’s an auditory experience too, as a good breeze makes sabal palm fronds snap like bacon grease. I’ve pulled my bike off the Fort King Trail that runs between the Hillsborough River State Park and Dead River. Now I’m sitting just off the trail, the sabal’s lone audience. Place your arm below your eyes so that the grass-line and sabal trunk are blocked from view and you can see the tree anew: the greenish-yellowish-brownish burst of fronds is a sun, their tips finger-like rays. Imagine the sabal sun as a backdrop to the sky and you, behind it, are infinite. It’s a practice in perspective that creates a landscape anew It also shows how frighteningly easy frame of mind can veil everyday wonders.

        I’m always dumbfounded by finding more litter the closer I get to the river, particularly in pristine spots. It’s a frustrating disconnect. Following the Fort King Trail towards Dead River, I found a UFO – unidentified fishing object. Many of the short paths off the main trail where I’ve found litter lead to prime casting spots overlooking the Hillsborough River. One park-goer who later saw me cataloging my trash blamed the fishermen for the park’s eyesores. I’m leery of generalizations and quick conclusions, but it doesn’t take Columbo to equate discarded hook bags and packaging with people fishing. 

        I’ve also found beer cans galore, but the mess has inspired my unconventional anti-litter campaign that might work: beer brands named after well-known naturalists, their sneering likeness or some saying on the can a littering deterrent. Carr’s Light could replace Coors Light. Bring back Billy Beer, but name it after William Bartram. Bold letters could scream: “Behold this Beer! And don’t litter here!” Let Old Milwaukee become Old Muir, borrow the Busch slogan, and give real meaning to “Head for the mountains.” Why not Leopold Blue instead of Labatt Blue? And finally, how about Naturalist’s Light instead of Natural Light. Plaster the can with elementary school drawings of the clean sunny outdoors - the ultimate guilt trip.

        I’ve followed south one of the many ditches at Dead River that wind through the woods. This one is about ten to twelve feet at its widest, narrowing with fallen limbs and logs at points along the way. Above, the wind as waterfall cascaded from tree to tree. To my side I saw fallen leaves lodged in a clump of palmetto fronds. The image seemed familiar. Then it hit me: the leaves resemble locust shells that I picked as a kid from pine trees atop the slope of a hill fronting our house. The light-weight hollow shells, about the size of my thumb, always intrigued me. The insect inside was alive when it shed its shell. But not knowing that, you might imagine that the shell marked the end of the bug’s life. Quiet the mind, adopt a divine-colored lens, and your surroundings become clues to a spiritual scavenger hunt. The patterned, pitched callings of song birds aren’t repetitious, but rather revelations. Wind is a waterfall. 

        I sat on a log to read a book, but my attention was elsewhere: today’s text was unwritten. So I walked.  

        I left my bike at home, determined to slow my pace even more. A butterfly wing with a black background and orange, lavender and white accents is my first find of the day along the park entrance road. I bag it in a Ziploc, figuring I’ll write about it later. Later I’ll learn that postponing the moment wasn’t such a good idea.

        Reaching the culvert I walked last week, I head right, or north, off of the road. The woods of Dead River can be deceiving: just when you feel as if you’re covering ground others have not for years, you’ll find a beer can, a balloon or a snack bag. This area being a flood plain, it’s always possible that the litter I find was elsewhere first, but filling up a plastic grocery bag or two every outing reminds me these woods are fairly popular, despite walking its depths in solitude. Seeing a four-and-a-half foot PVC pole laying in what looks like a gopher tortoise hole reminds me of this. And I wonder: what jackass shoves a pole into a hole that’s clearly a home? Is it for fun or food?

        Curiosity lured me from the culvert into the woods where there’s no discernable path beyond a few clearings and narrow trails where animals have traveled. I’m willing to explore a few hundred feet beyond the path I know, but I’m in no hurry to get lost. It’s worthwhile though: I found, or stumbled upon, a four-to-five-story oak tree. By far it’s the tallest oak tree I’ve ever seen. A makeshift orange grove of twenty sour orange trees – tried one and its tart beyond taste – surrounds the oak. Stand under an oak like this and you’re wrapped in reverence. Backwards my mind tracks through centuries envisioning other people who’ve stood beneath this tree. Seminole Indians? Cattlemen? Huck Finn-esque locals who knew these woods as their backyard? Who else has peeled and pitched a sour orange? 

        Longevity and permanence is refreshing in a frenetic age like ours. I look at this oak and think of Mr. Wharton, a 90-something year old neighbor who lives a few blocks north of us. Yesterday, I met him by chance in his neighborhood. He was retrieving his recycle bins. I was riding my bike to the park to play pick-up basketball. I passed him and offered to help with the bins, but he didn’t need it. We started talking and he told me he lived on the same street for about fifty years. He talked about his days as principal at Plant High School. I recalled another Hillsborough County high school that carried his name, and he confirmed it was named for him. His eyes were kind and often he smiled. As a father of a young child, I’m up on my Disney movies. One of my daughter’s favorites is Pocahontas, which features an aged and wise talking tree, Grandmother Willow, who nurtures Pocahontas. Sounds corny but I’d love to be startled by a talking Dead River Oak, just to hear about who has passed before me, or maybe to give guidance to my thesis. Personified, the tree lives - you just have to stumble upon him after recycling day.   

        Vibrating cell phones are nerve racking in the woods, particularly when you’re about to cross a log that’s been methodically scouted for its optimum snake-free crossing zone. That zone is a wide clearing on the other side, itself a challenge to reach given my proven ineptitude at long jumping. It was second or third grade. The skit: Jack Be Nimble. I was Jack with an audience. All I had to do was clear the candle stick, maybe six inches high, and I clumsily clipped the thing. It wasn’t even lit; perhaps that’s the motivation I needed. That’s valuable background some twenty-seven years later, an indelible memory I haven’t revisited in a while. And now that I think about it, perhaps that’s why votive candle-lined walkways bring on cold sweats. What does this have to do with Dead River? There are a lot of fallen logs and a lot of leaps. And cell phones that vibrate in snake-crossing moments translate as rattles in your pocket.

        I carry the cell phone so I can be in touch if needed. If I wasn’t responsible for others, I doubt I’d have one. In this case, it brought a little needed levity. My wife told me a story about our daughter biting her friend. When my wife asked our daughter’s friend if he was okay, he said, “I had pizza for lunch!” That trumped the annoyance of being startled. But bitten, how comically ironic would it have been that my link to help was instead my downfall? Not very. But five months removed from the incident and rewriting this journal entry in the comfort of my backyard tends to give me the confidence to leap over hubris, even though I can’t jump worth a damn. 

        The butterfly wing I found a few days earlier is falling apart. When I found it I put it in a plastic bag, thinking I’d write about it later. But now that the wing is broken, I realize that I have to be in the moment. It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings I picked up from my brother a few years back, who picked it up from a friend. It goes something like this: “If you’ve got one leg in the past and one leg in the future, you’re pissing on the present.”   

        The wing’s still intriguing. It has circular patterns, lavender and black, on a royal blue background. Where the wing would connect to the butterfly’s body is a cherry red, oblong potato shape. Touched, the colors smear like ink, but as I rub my fingertips, they retain their sand-like shape and size. This seamless art sparks an idea: what if we could dye our sweat so that perspiring was inspiring, a colorful outlet for energy? Arrange your pores so they create patterns. It might put tattoo artists out of business, but better health via exercise seems to be worthwhile upside. It would bring the artist out in everyone, a boon for the humanities, the fundraising possibilities endless, government funding no longer a lynchpin for survival. Now that’s American. 

        I’ve crossed Dead River at a shallow point, the bank apparently worn by erosion and foot traffic, probably two-legged and four. Scanning the trees above, my eyes meet a bard owl’s eyes. We look at each other for a few seconds before it silently swoops to an oak tree on the other side of Dead River. I’m fascinated when wild animals hold eye-contact. You might think that the unspoken experience of eye-contact would breed familiarity, not fear, with animals. I don’t expect people to nuzzle up to Grizzly bears, but would it be farfetched to give those moments of eye-contact the respect most people give to a household pet, a bond strengthened by eye-contact, with the seemingly added disincentives of slobber and bad breath? Wild animals just want space. You don’t have to sleep like a contortionist or succeed the foot of your bed to appease them.  It gives me a greater appreciation for land conservation; and king-sized beds. 

        I’m on the hoot-owl-sighting side of Dead River again, but dirtier. I fell into Dead River, shin-high, trying to cross a downed sabal palm three feet over the water. Add balance issues to my growing list of devolving survival skills. But I climbed the sabal again, eased across, and here I am. Take that, Darwin. About thirty yards west of where I am the Hillsborough and Dead Rivers reconnect downstream. Eyeing Dead River as I neared the Hillsborough, I noticed a low muddy crossing about two-feet wide, the water some six inches deep. Darwin’s up one, again. 

        Now at the Hillsborough, I follow the bank downstream, dodging thick spider webs attached to palm fronds, watching my way waste up instead of the ground six to eight feet in front of me, which, when attentive, is how I’ve been walking these woods. Something slithered. “God! Jesus Christ!” I said instinctively, ashamed in the aftermath by what I blurted, but reasoning it was my subconscious’ impromptu prayer compensating for my coordination. After retreating about ten feet, I watched the snake, about three feet long, nonchalantly head for a riverside palm tree that it disappeared behind. The snake was dark brownish-black with pale yellowish-brown bands. My first thought was moccasin. I gained my thoughts and crossed Dead River to read my field guide in the middle of a well-worn sandy foot path where things were clearly visible. My description matched part of my guide’s for moccasin. 

        Later, at home, I checked out several websites and wondered if I hadn’t seen a banded water snake instead – it’s very similar in color and size to the moccasin. My snake encounter heightened my awareness for the rest of the day. Ideally, I’d remain calm and aware crossing a snake outdoors. Ideally, I wouldn’t cross one.  

        There are armadillos aplenty in Dead River’s woods. Had I never seen one, I still would know they run rampant: their droppings, distinctive piles of gray marble, dot the ditches. But I’ve seen them. No offense to their kind, but often I’ve waited patiently to see what’s rustling in the underbrush only to see the familiar gray-armored one waddle out, then scamper away when it saw me, perhaps cursing under its breath about seeing another one of my kind.

        So when riding my bike I heard a louder-than-armadillo rustling in the park’s roadside ditch, I expected to see something else. But not an alligator. Not in a dry ditch I’ve fetched litter from. It’s about four feet long and a mile or so from the river. But it’s mating season, and there is an acre-sized pool of swampy water near the park entrance. Flabbergasted, I rode past the gator about twenty yards where I stopped in the road to wait and watch. A few minutes later, a jogger emerged from a nearby trail. I gave him a heads up about the gator. He said he runs the swamps throughout the area, including nearby Flatwoods Park, where he once passed an alligator sunning by the side of the path. The jogger eased closer to the gator, within ten feet. I reminded him they’re pretty fast on land, but he was unfazed. “I better keep going before I seize up,” he said, and jogged away. I rode my bike past the gator once or twice, but it didn’t budge. I wanted to out-wait the gator to see where it went, but I’d already planned to meet someone with Swiftmud, so I left.  

        I’ve picked up a walking stick about four feet long. It’s wide and blunt at the bottom, narrow at the top and sharp enough for piercing hard to reach litter. It also bows slightly, about the same bend as someone rising from bed to bend their back inward and stretch. At that angle, I can flip the bottom of the stick out to secure my step, then twist it 180 degrees propelling myself forward. I don’t need the stick, but it sets my rhythm as I follow another ditch deep into the woods. 

        Ten to fifteen minutes in, an accidental ornament catches my eye. A sour orange still attached to its limb is lodged between two fingers of a full-sized neighboring palm frond. The coupling creates an image of a one-eyed crab and raises interesting questions. Did the wind swing the orange forward into the palm frond, its fingers strong enough to snag the fruit on its back-swing? Or did the bud of the flower bloom between the fingers, the orange growing in place? Was the palm frond blown back into the orange, whereas the orange is in place and the palm frond stuck? It’s a profound realization that an orange and a palm frond, two common items in Florida, stand out when rearranged by chance. I often overlook the everyday, but imagine how many of these happenings go unnoticed unless stumbled upon? Amazing that incidental art can serve as a springboard to renewal. Like the butterfly wing, it lifts the mind to new places. It also enlivens my senses that too often are dulled by routines that act like sponges soaking up my sensibilities.  

        I find a deflated red helium balloon next to an old barbed-wired fence about a half-mile into the woods. Just when it feels like I’m in the middle of nowhere, litter reminds me otherwise. Knowing this area is prone to flooding, the balloon could have just as easily floated here by land than air. Maybe it came from a birthday party at Dead River or the nearby state park. Without knowing if the litter in the woods floated here or was dropped, it’s hard to get a sense of how often people walk these ditches. I haven’t seen many foot prints in muddy areas. But litter becomes the gnat that won’t go away, momentarily distracting, leaving and returning.

        Up ahead a massive fallen oak, its trunk four to five feet in diameter, blocks the ditch. A decapitated sabal palm, its trunk still reaching twenty five to fifty feet high, probably felt the fall. I’ve learned to look for headless sabals around downed large trees; it seems to be a common pairing. I’m tempted to climb and walk the oak, but it’s surrounded by knee-high grass. An indelible memory comes to mind. During a controlled burn at Myakka River State Park during my AmeriCorps days, I watched a five foot or so diamond-back rattler slither from thick brush. So I bypassed the brush before me, and followed a subtle path around a cluster of limbs through the woods. When the ditch has been blocked before, I’ve learned to look for subtle trails like this one, detours created by animal traffic, most likely.

        Beyond the oak tree, about seventy-five yards ahead, I saw a clearing washed by sunlight. Something raised and large was behind the clearing. It peaked my curiosity. So far I’d only seen flat ground and ditches. A topography shift of five feet or more might as well have been a mountain. 

        The path had petered out between here and there, but I was able to climb about ten feet up a twenty to twenty-five foot high elm tree, and look for the clearest path to the sun-lit opening ahead. I’d have to walk through some thick grass and over logs, but I figured I’d sweep the ground ahead with my walking stick to startle anything unseen. Like my experience with the orange and palm frond, the sun had slipped into the backdrop until it was redirected and shaped in my line of sight. Now I neared it with a sense of excitement, the raised mound of earth still a mystery. But what I saw before I reached the clearing confused me. A power line? As if suffering the walker’s equivalent of bends, I’d emerged from the solitude of the woods too soon. I was disoriented. 

            One moment my path was blocked, thick woods everywhere. Now I was walking past a power line, through the light, to a clearing and up the side of what turned out to be a service road. Completely confused. I’d never walked these woods without turning around. Now I didn’t know where I was. I walked towards a gate on the road and read a sign: “Park Boundary NO TRESPASSING Florida Department of Environmental Protection.” The gate was closed but an opening was wide enough to pass by foot or bike. As far as I knew I’d never left Swiftmud land, and the signs threw me off, but I walked past the gate anyway. Within a few hundred feet, I saw a sign marking the area as Dead River Park and realized what I’d done: The service road was the Fort King Trail linking Dead River and the state park. I’ve ridden my bike down the path on past outings. I felt like an idiot, but laughed at myself: it made sense that a boundary would break my frame of mind.