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Thanks for the adventure :)

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I went with my friend, Marc. He's three years older than I, and we've been very good friends since I was in sixth grade. He's like the big brother my parents were never able to give me. First we looked around at the remains of the nearby Spanish fort San Marcos, and found some pottery, plate chips, and bone by the water. It has no archaeological value because it was not in a layer of sediment, but we did not keep it, anyway. We had to kayak a little over a mile downriver, and against the incoming tide to get to the Port. It was very hard kayaking. We ended up singing "Just Around the Riverbend" from Pochahontas, and "Colors of the Wind," for fun. We got there, and trudged around the wilderness, finding remains of the town. Foundations, posts, trenches. We were at the edge of the forest, where it meets the marsh and saw a huge black thing in the marsh, very close. We were downwind, luckily, and edged through the high grass for a better look. We thought it was a Florida Black Bear. It was huge. Suddenly, it looked up. And it was a hog! I got a couple crappy shots with my camera (he looked away every time I would take the picture) and after he ran off we were on our way. We went over to the where the railroad tracks once were, and where they crossed a creek. The embankment rose straight out of the swamp. It was 5-6 feet high, and more than 8 feet wide. "Cotton built this," he said. "Solid ground straight out of nothing. The poor built this, and the slaves built this." And think about it. Before all the wealthy merchants came and built upon their foundation, who fought the wilderness, and the Native Americans, and the pitch black nights, and harsh summers here, but the pioneers? The poor, and the outcast came and made something rise from nothing, and as quickly as they had built it, mother nature took it away. A hurricane came through, and killed the town basically. It already had the same problems of Jamestown. It was built on a swamp, there was disease, poor drainage, wildlife. And one hurricane brought down the whole place.
It had been blockaded in the Civil War.
It had been the seat of power of Wakulla County.
It had been a trading post.
It had been.
And now what lives no longer is but a ghost-- beautiful, and strange, and diminished, at once. Merely shadows of what doesn't belong that we know to be man's mark left on the area.
We then went to Wakulla Beach, nearby. There was the foundation, and old Romanesque columns of a hotel, abandoned and torn down in the 1940s. We sat on the foundation, wondering what grandeur it would have been in the 30s. What room would we sit in? Was this the foyer? What grand art would we have sat among?
Soon after, we went home.
I'm exhausted out of my mind, and so sore, I cannot move.
But, God... it was beautiful.


Pictures soon.
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Comments

  1. Virgil's Avatar
    Ooh, would love to see pictures. A wild hog! That is so cool. They can be dangerous. How big was it? So jealous. I live in a city. Must really cool to have such wilderness around.