The Expedition is in its final days. We are camping now on the Suwannee River, ten miles north of the town of Fargo, Georgia. This is the fourth of six days on this water. It is an unplanned for treat at the end of a long journey.
Back in the first week of April we got a call from our friend, David Dorman, wildlife biologist for Osceola National Forest, called us to inform us that a wildfire had sprung up in the Pinhook Swamp. The Pinhook is a vast wetland that butts up against the Georgia/Florida state line. Our original route took us northeast through the Pinhook to Bethea State Forest, then across the state line into the Okefenokee Swamp. Hot, dry weather and steady winds fed the fire over the intervening days. The County Line fire (straddling the Baker/Columbia County line) spread and quickly east, growing to over 35,000 by the middle of last week. The Pinhook and Bethea became non-starters for getting us to Georgia.
Dorman visited us at our campsite on Ocean Pond, just within the national forest boundary. We studied maps and talked options late into the night. Dorman sported a three day old stubble, and his soot-covered clothes and weather broken fire boots were testaments to the long hours he’d been working since the fire popped up. We’d reached Ocean Pond by rejoining the Florida National Scenic Trail near Palestine Lake. We decided to adjust our route by continuing west on the Florida Trail until we reached the Suwannee, which we would paddle 47 miles to Stephen Foster State Park in Georgia.
So here we are, 35 miles in. We began paddling at Turner Bridge boat ramp, six miles or so south of the state line. The stretch of river we are paddling is famous for massive Ogeechee tupelo (Nyssa ogeche) trees. The trees here are bizarre and beautiful at once. The tupelos and pond cypress seem to compete for which can place the most attention grabbing form along these sandy bluffs. The tupelo trunks twist and bulge and fold over themselves in bizarre, buddha-like shapes. Their roots spill out from the trunk and fall toward the inky blackwater in disorganized cascades. The cypress are anchored to the bank by massive, furrowed and bulbous bases, suddenly tapering to a small bole, usually less than 50′ tall. The cypress needles appear almost fluorescent green at this time of year. Pileated woodpeckers work along the stubby tops, and brown water snakes gather among the knees. The knees sometimes take odd shapes, arching horizontally 20 feet from the tree before twisting down to form a clutch, as if to claim the territory. Today Joe Davenport said, “This river is endlessly beautiful. I could devote a whole day to photographing each one of these trees.” It seems to get ever more alluring the further upstream we paddle.

The end is too near.

Tonight we are camped on Deep Creek, south of Maytown Road. To get here we backtracked from our friend Courtney Ward’s fish camp and turned out kayaks up Deep Creek where it meets the St. Johns at the north end of Lake Harney.
Weariness from our week of paddling hung on me today, so I moved at a leisurely pace. Elam moved ahead, intent on filming the beautiful cypress swamp that surrounds Deep Creek in its downstream reaches. I fished along the St. Johns, not being able to resist a likely-looking lilly pad or submerged tree. The sentinel palms on the east bank were perfect subjects for photographs, if only there had been a few more showy clouds around. Must be all the photographers I’ve been slumming around with. At one point recently Carlton furrowed his brow at the sky and declared that the clouds weren’t organized enough for his taste.

At the mouth of the creek two manatees glided past us on their way upstream. Carlton spent an hour photographing a particularly bold limpkin he found. The limpkin is an expert at preying on freshwater clams, deftly plucking them from the shallows, opening the shell and pulling out the meat. Carlton described the bird eating 10 clams, going to the bank to preen, and then returning to feed again. Ten more down the hatch. Preen. This appeared to go on for hours. It was the kind of systematic efficiency that thrills Mr. Ward, the expedition engineer. His pictures will tell the story.

I fussed with photographing the manatees I found at the lower half mile of Deep Creek. Tannin-stained water and sharp reflections of cypress trees made it a mostly fruitless effort. It was more enjoyable to sit quietly in the afternoon light. I hummed a Robert Earl Keen song about living fast or dying slow. A committee of black vultures stood watch in the greening cypress. I assured them I was very alive, only a bit road-worn.

We spent our second night at Cul Pepper Bend on the Econlockhatchee River. Twice in the night it rained. Morning clouds on the eastern horizon foiled plans to photograph the sentinel palms along the banks of the river. The fish were not biting, so I opted for a bath instead. Lawrence Dimmitt warned me not to use all the hot water as I tiptoed gingerly in the sandy shallows.

At SR 46 Lawrence and the team parted ways. We continued north to Lake Harney. At the mouth of the river we found a flock of 100 white pelicans, huge white beasts all sitting in silence on a shallow patch of ground near the middle of the channel. This was the third flock of pelicans we’d encountered on the St. Johns. On the second day I was transfixed at the sight of a flock of 150 pelicans soaring on a thermal seemingly thousands of feet in the air. These birds are among the many species that follow the shad that migrate into the upper St. Johns in the winter during the spawn. We paused to photograph the pelicans today, finally having them at close range. After a few minutes they filed into the water and swam away from the harassment.
The wind picked up and a rain shower moved across the west side of the lake. I put on a rain coat to keep the spray from soaking my right side. Eventually we turned and the wind, steadily out of the southeast, blew us across Lake Harney. Carlton and I trolled the middle of the lake with light spinning tackle. He landed his first fish of the expedition, a small gar that took his plastic shrimp imitation.

Elam powered along ahead of us as we left Lake Harney and re-entered the St. Johns. I grew lazy with the wind and current helping me along. I fished half-heartedly among a few dock pilings, catching a small bass every mile or so. We passed the mouth of Deep Creek, lined on either side by cypress trees, new needles shining, almost neon green in the afternoon sun. Massive live oak limbs hung out into the river, and palm hammocks lined either bank, slender gray trunks twisting toward the sky. Carlton marveled at the relative wildness of the St. Johns.

We let the wind take us on past the mouth of Deep Creek to a fish camp owned by Carlton’s cousin, Courtney Ward. By the end of the day we’d covered nearly 15 miles. Even downwind, when we arrived we were exhausted.
Tomorrow we will paddle Deep Creek. We are in Volusia County now, a jurisdiction that is among the most progressive counties in the country in terms of corridor issues. The Volusia Conservation Corridor is an example of locally-focused policies that can build large networks, such as the Florida Ecological Greenway Network. And protection of a sufficiently wide and connected Volusia Conservation Corridor that is effectively buffered from encroaching development and enhanced by building road crossing structures for wildlife including the Florida black bear, is essential for protection of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. The next few days will include properties that have been the focus of efforts by Volusia County policy makers and conservationists for three decades. Volusia County includes several critical bottlenecks in habitat for wide-ranging species. A male panther was documented near the upstream end of Lake Harney within the past year and the local Florida black bear population may be increasing in size and providing additional opportunities to connect to other bear populations further south. Gathering the knowledge of the planners and policy makers who worked to secure these corridor opportunity areas will make for interesting discussion over the next week. There is much to learn for all of us here.

We spent day 63 camping at Cul Pepper Bend near the mouth of the Econlockhatchee River, which flows into the St Johns River just south of S.R. 46. Our St. Johns River journey is in its second week. We arrived at Lake Winder last Tuesday.
Thus far the St Johns has been smooth. The weather has cooperated. For weeks, it seems, we have had to contend with the wind whenever we took to the water. The wind has lain down for us this past week. We are heading downstream now as well (the St. Johns flows north to Jacksonville).
We appear to have planned our route through the serpentine, many-channeled upper basin pretty well. We have camped almost exactly where we intended to camp when we drew the route back in October 2011. (This never ceases to amaze me about the expedition. I will always remember Carlton and I at 3 am night after night, sitting trance-like in front of Google Earth and cursing nonsensically at the difficulty of routing oneself through 1000 miles, 100 yards at a time). We looked for places with water and trees. We imagined the scene at daybreak and dusk. It appears to be working.
We also appear to have planned our food fairly well, which is notable only in that we organized that aspect of the St. Johns trek without Mallory, who is our most reliable food planner. Mallory’s father, Laurence Dimmitt III, is kayaking with us, however, and his food appears to be perfectly rationed and delicious. Expeditioning just runs in the family, we think. The three of us speculate that Laurence is reporting to Mallory on our various ineptitudes.
We spent yesterday kayaking a portion of our route with Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam and Attorney General Pam Bondi. We met Mr. Putnam and Ms. Bondi at Hatbill Park in mid-morning yesterday. A gathering of friends and family was also there to join in. After scarfing a couple creme-filled from Dunkin Donuts, we headed off downstream with our guests. It was a day long in the making. Carlton first met with the Commissioner about the Florida Wildlife Corridor in 2010, not long after the first map was commissioned. Ms. Bondi has been aware of the expedition since early 2011, before her election to AG.
Fittingly, the day was brilliant. The river was alive with birds. Roseate spoonbill, white pelican, bald eagle, meadowlark, white ibis, black-necked stilt and red-wing blackbird were in the mix. We wound our way north, with the oak palm hammocks just visible far to the east and west. The banks of the St. Johns are surprisingly shallow. I imagined the river in wetter times, spreading out over a vast shallow plain, filling the space between the distant treelines and gathering wading birds and waterfowl by the millions.
Our expedition cabinet members seemed to fit in, kicking off shoes and putting some muscle into paddling. The scenery was spectacular, and the fact that none of us have much experience with the St. Johns added to the general feeling of adventure. It is a comfort to know that these two prominent public servants have an understanding and appreciation for the interconnectedness of Florida’s natural systems. Mr. Putnam and Ms. Bondi demonstrated their committment through their presence yesterday.
We continued north until we reached the mouth of the Econlockhatchee River, which runs east out of Little Big Econ State Forest. We made our camp a little under two miles from the confluence, in a beautiful spot with a broad white sand beach rising out of one of the Econ’s characteristic oxbow turns. Here the river is lined with sentinel-like cabbage palms. In the turns we find holes 12 feet deep. This morning I caught a fat 3 lb. largemouth bass, her belly full of roe. This is easily one of our better camping spots. It will be hard to leave.

We are past the halfway point. The past two weeks has taken on an incredible series of adventures. We have been traveling in the land north of Lake Okeechobee, otherwise known as the Northern Everglades. We paddleboarded east down Josephine Creek. We kayaked north across blustery Lake Istokpoga, and ground our way upstream through Arbuckle Creek, all the way to the Avon Park Air Force Range.

We turned east again through the bombing range and found our way to the Kissimmee River, where engineers have restored natural meanders and habitat to the banks. We swam the Kissimmee and slogged east across the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, where we were shown the stronghold of Florida grasshopper sparrow, arguably the rarest bird in North America. From KPPSP we biked north, to the Latt Maxcy and Destiny properties south of SR 60. From SR 60 we biked north on the Peavine Trail to the Adams Ranch on Lake Marian, on Saturday, one week ago. Mallory rejoined the expedition after too long away. Bad weather on Sunday forced us to hike from the Adams camp west onto Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area. Our plan to kayak through Lake Marian, Lake Jackson and Lake Kissimmee en route to Brahma Island was spoiled by 30-40 mph wind gusts out of the northwest. Instead we hiked 10 miles due west to the banks of Lake Kissimmee. In howling wind and three foot chop we struggled across the lake for the toughest two miles of the expedition, finally arriving at Brahma Island just as dark fell. We spent a day recuperating on the island. On Tuesday paddled north again, and again the wind pounded us in the afternoon. Lake Hatchineha and the Creek Ranch became our home for Tuesday and Wednesday nights. On Thursday we went on horseback from the Creek Ranch to The Nature Conservancy’s Disney Wilderness Preserve headquarters near Poinciana in Osceola County. With us were members of the Northern Everglades Alliance, an group of ranchers and conservationists committed to conserving the working landscape of central Florida for water and wildlife. DWP marked the northernmost extent of our movements in the Everglades Watershed. We spent a night with Carlos Vergara at his Camp Lonesome near Keenansville. This morning we began hiking again at Three Lakes WMA, heading east towards the St. Johns River watershed.

We are in the beginning of a fairly difficult section of the Expedition, on a couple of fronts. This is physically grueling work on some days. On Monday we hiked from the Hendrie Ranch near Venus to Archbold Biological Station. Walking the station’s firelanes, especially during the dry season, is a chore. We did about 9 miles that day. At the end of our slog we were treated to Archbold’s newly completed dormitory and learning center.
Tuesday was both a mental and physical workout, as we held a couple of workshops in the scrub with Archbold scientists. After lunch we held a round table and interviewed with some media members. Then late at night I was tucked in behind my keyboard, typing. Both Carlton and I were up until 2 and had to be awake before 7. This is fairly typical behavior in times when we have cellular service and wireless access.

Wednesday we covered another 9 miles, and this too was mostly on freshly disced firelanes. It felt blistering hot and dry all day. My water was down to about half a liter by the time we arrived at our campsite, where our provisions were cached.

Fortunately neither of our two most recent hikes have been under full weight. Thursday we hiked north with packs 13 miles to Josephine Creek, which crosses US 27 north of Lake Placid and connects to Lake Istokpoga.

Toward the end of the day, short of our end point and short on daylight, we had our driver Rick Smith meet us at a shell road to the west of Lake June in Winter so we could switch to bicycling for speed.

This is also a difficult region for long distance movement of animals. Thursday our route included a section of corridor west of the town of Placid Lakes that is absolutely critical to maintaining connectivity north and south across SR 70. It was another interesting opportunity to observe a landscape feature from the perspective of a bear. Three of the past four travel days have included crossings of US 27 and SR 70, two arterial, high speed highways that divide this landscape and produce scores of roadkilled animals each year, including bears.

Facilitating functional connectivity for bears and other species across these two highways are also essential at both regional and state scales. If these roads become increasingly impassable as traffic and development increase, the Highlands-Glades bear subpopulation will become fragmented and one of the best opportunities for connecting conservation lands all the way from south Florida to north Florida will be lost. Fortunately, there are very good opportunities to protect these landscapes and potentially construct wildlife crossings in the future to further facilitate connectivity.

As we hiked Wednesday we became aware of habitat becoming more narrow as we neared the road. Citrus groves lined either side of a small neck of scrub extending north toward SR 70. We stood at the road edge, pondering all this as a particularly careful bear might. Mid-day traffic flew past us. Finally a gap in the delivery trucks and RV’s came and we scampered across to safety.

The FWCE project hinges on these narrow, mostly linear areas that animals are known to use for travel. The corridor we hiked Thursday provides egress for male black bears in breeding season through an otherwise risky, open landscape, ideally so that they can access females and reproduce.

Every day we face challenges as we travel from point to point. Overcoming each obstacle gives us all a sense of adventure. We have been extremely fortunate at many turns. The completion of each day’s route brings a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, not to mention the gratitude we have to landowners and stewards who allow us access. The presence of wildlife and their use of these same routes (which the University of Kentucky bear project and FFWCC panther biologists have documented) is a hopeful thing that keeps me going, in a sense. Walking the corridor on Thursday I passed shiny new signs along Fisheating Creek, delineating a conservation easement covering nearly 30,000 acres of protected working ranch lands. In July 2010 the US Department of Agriculture made this unprecedented investment in the northern reaches of Fisheating Creek, designed to protect the headwaters through the Wetlands Reserve Program. Multiple stakeholders have had to work to find common ground in order to make big deals like the Fisheating Creek WRP happens. It seems like there is a developing recognition among among the private landowners and the conservation community that they have more common interests than either side previously thought. If implementation of the easement works, it will mean there will ways be at least for animals to move in a vital movement corridor.

We have had two amazing days at Archbold Biological Station, near Lake Placid, Florida. The station’s executive director, Hilary Swain, joined us Sunday night and led us onto Archbold property on Monday. We followed Hilary through about 9 miles of beautiful rosemary scrub and scrubby flatwoods.

Most who know Hilary would say she generally sets a blistering pace, and her approach to hiking is no different. Fortunately Dr. Swain cannot resist a chance to give lessons in the scrub, so whenever we stopped we were treated to some of the amazing natural history of the Lake Wales Ridge.
Upon reaching the station we were welcomed by Highlands County Commissioner and Archbold board of trustees member Barbara Stewart.

We spent the late afternoon with two visiting researchers, Zach Forsburg of the Orriane Society and Jennifer Smith of Virginia Tech. Both are conducting telemetry studies on their respective species of interest.
Forsburg is working for the Orriane Society, which is focused on indigo snake research and conservation.
www.orrianesociety.org
We watched Zach track one of his study animals to an abandoned gopher tortoise burrow, where he lead us through the natural history of these amazing creatures.

http://m.flickr.com/photos/carltonward/6919605339/lightbox/

Jennifer is working as a post-doctoral researcher for Virginia Tech, helping continue a long-term research project on caracara. Caracara are a large species of falcon, which thrives on the improved pasture habitat that dominates the this region of Florida. We visited a nesting pair of caracara on the Archbold Reserve, a 5000 acre grassland west of the main station where restoration projects are ongoing and a local leases cattle. The pair of caracara watched us suspiciously as we conducted our interview with Jennifer.
Though we had no traveling scheduled for Tuesday, it was as busy a day as we have had since the launch. First we visited the scrub with two of the station’s long tenured lab heads. Dr. Eric Menges of the plant ecology lab guided us through some of the many rare plants of the southern Lake Wales Ridge. Dr. Mark Deyrup of the entomology lab gave us an overview of the insect pollinators that are constantly at work here. A little later in the morning, Reed Bowman of the avian ecology lab introduced the gathering throng of media and expedition team members to the scrub jay research. Reed and his team are responsible for one of the five longest-termed data sets for a single species.
After a big lunch at the station’s new Frances Archbold Hufty Center, we sat for a round table discussion. Panelists included Tom Hoctor, Dr. Swain, Carlton, Julie Morris of Wildlands Conservation, and Thomas Eason, Director of Habitat and Species Conservation for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Before leaving, Dr. Swain led us to the station’s new black bear diorama. We spent a short while explaining the bear project, which I worked on, and talking about the legacy of Dave Maehr and Mason Smoak, for whom the bear diorama is to be named.

By the end of the round table, after two additional radio interviews, I was ready for a break from the action. Joe Davenport, Tom, Julie and I snuck off to Lake Annie. Though there have been some cool nights recently, and the day wasn’t particularly hot, I had been looking forward to jumping into the lake for too long. After a refreshing dip we took one of the station canoes out so Tom and I could steal a few minutes of fishing before dark. We caught about a dozen largemouth bass and one very nice chain pickerel before calling it a night.

The Expedition has reached Highlands County, in south central Florida. Since leaving the Caloosahatchee River ten days ago, we have traveled across properties with existing conservation easements. Some easements we touched are built around the protection of water in the Fisheating Creek watershed. Other easements we crossed included habitat mitigation banks for the gopher tortoise.
Our trek through the opportunity area for the Babcock to Fisheating Creek corridor was not easy. We found ourselves under heavy packs, trudging down recently disced firelanes under unseasonably warm conditions. We bushwacked for the better part of a day in Glades County. Ultimately, we found our way east from Babcock Ranch through intact habitat all the way to south Highlands County. Multiple black bears that the University of Kentucky (myself included) tracked with GPS collars during a 5 year period made this same trek, making long movements west before ultimately turning around and heading back to Glades County and Highlands County. As we entered bear project stomping grounds at the Smoak Ranch near Venus, Florida I realized I had been walking on conservation land for three days almost continuously, if not for a half an hour spent walking down a road heading east out of Palmdale. Despite the years I’ve spent studying this landscape, until I physically traveled over it I did not fully appreciate the connections that remain. Certainly more can be done to ensure viable corridors for large animals exist in perpetuity, but what we experienced suggested that the habitat in Charlotte, Glades and south Highlands County is still suitable for traveling wildlife. The bear data from Highlands County supports this idea. Through cooperative efforts between ranchers and agencies this part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor stands a good chance of remaining in existence.
My appreciation for the role of the private landowner in conservation began to take shape after coming to know one family in particular, onto whose land we finally crossed at midday Saturday. The Smoak family helped get the bear project started, through a relationship the family had with my former boss, Dave Maehr. Dave was an outspoken proponent of the idea that private landowners were key to the conservation of the Florida panther. As we walked across the Smoak cattle pasture I stepped over the entrance to a burrowing owl burrow. Along the way we found the remains of two unfortunate June beetles, skewered on the barbed wire fence by loggerhead shrike. As we made our way west toward the Smoak camphouse we passed by the pine tree where I caught the first bear of my career.
Tracee Smoak, the wife of Mason, the pilot who died with Dave in 2008, met us at the camphouse. Their three children ran among the pines and clumps of palmetto, chasing each other and squealing. The full circle way of things began to push itself into my thoughts. This is a territory I know and love, and I, like Dave was, take great satisfaction from knowing that it is and will likely always be in good hands.