Hello, hungry people.
For starters, how ‘bout a big round of applause for Deanna Doane.
The 27-year-old Florida native from Jacksonville Beach recently set the record for the fastest time in hiking the entire length of the Florida Trail. She covered the 1,108 miles—from Big Cypress Preserve in Collier County to Gulf Islands National Seashore near Pensacola—in 19 days, 12 hours and 13 minutes.
That works out to an average of 57 miles per day.
I can hear the snickers from so-called “serious hikers,” who do their trekking in the mountains.
Even the most experienced of them have to really book it to hit 30 miles per day on the Appalachian Trail. And Cheryl Strayed, author of “Wild,” took 94 days to walk a 1,100 mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail.
Florida doesn’t have mountains. It barely has hills. It’s as flat as our roadkill.
So hiking an average of 57 miles per day, the mountain snobs say, doesn’t really count.
But here’s what makes Deanna Doane’s record even more remarkable and why I stand in complete awe of her accomplishment: The first leg of the Florida Trail runs between the Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41) and Alligator Alley (I-75), right through Big Cypress. It’s the wettest walk in the world, day after day of wading through swamp water, body parts shriveling, mold growing between your toes.
Yes, you do indeed get close to nature. A little too damn close.
And I will never-ever walk it again.
***
I’m still not sure what possessed me and my friend Cardenas when we set out to walk the first leg of the Florida Trail some years back.
But we were Floridians. We thought we could handle it.
I’d like to think we weren’t motivated purely by testosterone, but then aren’t all of us victims of our hormones?
Put it this way: Our wives thought we were nuts.
They did, however, drive us to the trailhead just off U.S. 41 near the Big Cypress National Preserve Visitors Center, kiss us goodbye and send us off on our walk north to Alligator Alley.
An hour later, while they were in Naples, sitting at a waterside restaurant, drinking Bloody Mary’s and munching on conch fritters, we were up to our waists in swamp water and wondering what the hell we were doing.
“Hey, it’s only 30 miles. And we’ve got three days to do it,” said Cardenas. “How hard can it be?”
Here’s how hard: When we started out, there were three of us. But the third person—who I will call by his real name, George Romard, so as to embarrass him—gave up after about a mile.
For the record, we came across three water moccasins during that first mile.
Cardenas and I used our walking sticks to flip the snakes away from our path. George had a different technique in mind. Unbeknownst to us, he had brought along a .22 pistol and pulled it out at the first snake encounter.
“I really hate snakes,” he said.
We talked him out of shooting the first snake. But after the second and third ones came along, George had seen enough.
“I’m outta here,” he said, choosing to walk back to the Tamiami Trail and hitchhike home.
But not me and Cardenas.
We had packed hammocks, lots of food, a quart of good bourbon, plenty of dry clothes. Bring it on.
Stupid males. We waded and waded and waded.
***
Swampophiles will tell you that their beloved soggy domain is a place of subtle and enchanting beauty. They will tell you that the swamp should be approached metaphorically, all the better for learning its most precious lessons.
I came to the swamp wanting to partake of its wonders, really I did. I wanted to revel in the fragile glory of a ghost orchid, thrill to the dreamy flight of a swallowtail kite, immerse myself in the natural cathedral that is a cypress dome.
Instead, I spent most of my time retrieving my boots after they were sucked off my feet by the honeycomb of rock in the swamp floor. Waterlogged, our backpacks became hundred-pound burdens.
The first night, we burned all our extra clothes rather than lug them out.
The second night, our hammocks ripped apart and sent both Cardenas and me crashing to the hard limestone floor of a palmetto hammock. There was not enough bourbon to ease the pain. Nor stave off the mosquitoes. The two-day snake count hit twenty-three, not all of them moccasins, but still. Snakes. Slithering through the water. Near our feet.
I began to regret not asking George to lend us his .22.
***
Cardenas had brought along his German shepherd, a good and noble creature named Burr. But by the third day, Burr had begun to whimper and whine, something he had never done before.
“Here’s the thing about dogs,” said Cardenas. “They cannot extract themselves from the present. They live purely in the here and now. Burr is walking through the swamp and he is miserable and he thinks this is the way it is going to be for the rest of his life. Dogs do not have the capacity for abstract thought. They cannot project the future. Burr doesn’t know that we will get out of here and everything will be good again. ”
Somewhere in there lurked a metaphor, but I was too exhausted to unravel it.
“Exactly when do you think we will get out of here?” I asked Cardenas.
“Oh, I’d guess another five or six miles,” he said.
That’s when I began to whimper and whine.
***
There was a happy ending. We made it out.
We hopped in the car that we had left alongside Alligator Alley three days earlier, drove into Naples and stopped at the first barbecue restaurant we came to.
We ate too much pork and drank too much beer and shared the leftovers with Burr.
And we reflected on what the swamp had taught us: Just because the trail exists doesn’t mean you have to follow it.
Some paths are less taken for good reason.
Laugh out loud funny!
Jim, I would guess that waist deep in the Florida swamps with only one bottle of spirits does indeed constitute "roughing it".