LJ Idol Season 8 Week 10 - Where the Black Water Rolls and the Saw Grass Waves
o/` "So blow, blow Seminole wind
Blow like you're never gonna blow again
I'm calling to you like a long lost friend
But I know who you are
And blow, blow from the Okeechobee
All the way up to Micanopy
Blow across the home of the Seminole
The alligators and the gar" o/`
-- "Seminole Wind" performed by John Anderson
"Are you absolutely certain this is the right lot?" He frowned down at the faded, many-times-copied map the realtor had given them. It looked like it had originally been a mimeograph of a map which had never been drawn by any civil engineer or architect. Someone at some point had optimistically labeled it "Plantation Subdivision". The area in which he and his wife now found themselves, however, didn't seem to fit the bill. Their little red Nissan truck had left the hardtop three miles back and they had traveled another two miles of sugar sand which shifted under the tires and threatened to mire them. They'd been searching for a rural property for over a year now; most of them were either too far away for a reasonable commute or too far out of the newly married couple's price range. This property was located on the extreme edge of the area he'd deemed reasonable for commuting into the city; there would be no DSL and possibly no broadband. The price couldn't be beaten, however. He wondered what the catch might be.
"It's the right one," his wife reassured him. "The nearest neighbor is at the end of the cul-de-sac. He owns one hundred and forty acres, most of which are undeveloped. There's a vacant parcel between us and him and the next nearest is next to ours. Look at this!" She reached out of the truck's window, which she had rolled down in order to breathe the pine and tannin scented air, and lovingly fingered the ten inch long needles of a gigantic long leaf pine. "This is old growth forest. I'll bet no one has ever touched this acreage."
"Someone must have touched it," he countered reasonably. "It's been surveyed, at least. Come on, let's walk."
They'd been offered five acres for $9500, quite a bit less than even the worst possible property in Florida ought to have been worth. Trusting neither price nor lawyers, he had painstakingly researched the deed at the county courthouse in order to make certain the title to the land would be clear. He'd discovered that not only did they own any mineral and water rights but also a goodly chunk of the right-of-way fronting it as well. The low offering price still bothered him, but he couldn't find any reason for refusing to at least consider the property. His wife needed to distance herself from the crushing bustle of a big city and he needed to keep his wife happy.
They chose a game trail which wound its way through a forest of mixed pine and hardwood: red laurels, cousin to bay and magnolia; sand pines, which she had already vowed to root out and destroy since they were non-native invaders; thick stands of palmetto fronds. Near the middle of the property, the ground took on that spongy feeling peculiar to places where the water table doesn't run far below the surface. Noting the presence of some small pitcher plants, she knelt and pawed through the thick pine needle carpeting. "No one's been here recently," she repeated as she let the rich plant debris sift through her fingers. "No can tabs, candy wrappers, or bottle caps. Oh, what's this?"
He peered curiously over her shoulder and wondered what had caught her attention. She took a cosmetics case out of her purse, selected a brush normally used for applying rouge, and began to brush gently at something in the soil in front of her. "A cypress knee," he guessed. "That'll mean there's swamp or wetland nearby. We won't be able to do much with the property unless we do it by hand."
She continued to brush at the object. Her careful excavations revealed not a cypress knee but a long, gnarled mangrove shaft to which was attached some sort of cobble. He'd never seen stone in Florida before; to his knowledge, aside from the occasional limestone deposit and the one granite quarry near Ocala, there wasn't any here. "Give me your water bottle." Puzzled, he passed it to her and watched as she gently trickled it over the stone in order to wash away the dirt and reveal more detail. "It's a greenstone celt, maybe part of a war club or an atlatl," she told him, her tone reverent.
"Looks like a bunch of sticks and stones to me," he muttered but a sudden thrill went down his back, as though he were being watched by unseen eyes...and they were waiting for him, right or wrong, to make a decision.
Just as quickly as she'd unearthed the artifact, she covered it back up and then kicked the pine duff back over it. "Buy the property," she told him. "If we hurry, we can make it back to the city and sign the papers this afternoon."
"Why?" he asked. "If those are artifacts, the state will be in here in nothing flat. They'll take it." Between that and the fact that they'd discovered a wetland habitat in the middle of the acreage, he'd be hard pressed to even find a place to put their home. It didn't sound like a good idea to him at all.
"It needs protected," she insisted. "We can give them that and much more."
References
Gannon, Michael. The New History of Florida, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 1996.
Milanich, Jerald T. Florida's Indians, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 1998.
Author's Note: Several greenstone celts and other artifacts similar to the ones I have periodically found on our property can be viewed at the Florida Natural History Museum in Gainesville, Florida. It should be noted that, as a private land owner, I do not have to turn over the artifacts nor do I have to allow excavation on the site. I have chosen, for reasons of my own, to leave the site as undisturbed as possible.
Blow like you're never gonna blow again
I'm calling to you like a long lost friend
But I know who you are
And blow, blow from the Okeechobee
All the way up to Micanopy
Blow across the home of the Seminole
The alligators and the gar" o/`
-- "Seminole Wind" performed by John Anderson
"Are you absolutely certain this is the right lot?" He frowned down at the faded, many-times-copied map the realtor had given them. It looked like it had originally been a mimeograph of a map which had never been drawn by any civil engineer or architect. Someone at some point had optimistically labeled it "Plantation Subdivision". The area in which he and his wife now found themselves, however, didn't seem to fit the bill. Their little red Nissan truck had left the hardtop three miles back and they had traveled another two miles of sugar sand which shifted under the tires and threatened to mire them. They'd been searching for a rural property for over a year now; most of them were either too far away for a reasonable commute or too far out of the newly married couple's price range. This property was located on the extreme edge of the area he'd deemed reasonable for commuting into the city; there would be no DSL and possibly no broadband. The price couldn't be beaten, however. He wondered what the catch might be.
"It's the right one," his wife reassured him. "The nearest neighbor is at the end of the cul-de-sac. He owns one hundred and forty acres, most of which are undeveloped. There's a vacant parcel between us and him and the next nearest is next to ours. Look at this!" She reached out of the truck's window, which she had rolled down in order to breathe the pine and tannin scented air, and lovingly fingered the ten inch long needles of a gigantic long leaf pine. "This is old growth forest. I'll bet no one has ever touched this acreage."
"Someone must have touched it," he countered reasonably. "It's been surveyed, at least. Come on, let's walk."
They'd been offered five acres for $9500, quite a bit less than even the worst possible property in Florida ought to have been worth. Trusting neither price nor lawyers, he had painstakingly researched the deed at the county courthouse in order to make certain the title to the land would be clear. He'd discovered that not only did they own any mineral and water rights but also a goodly chunk of the right-of-way fronting it as well. The low offering price still bothered him, but he couldn't find any reason for refusing to at least consider the property. His wife needed to distance herself from the crushing bustle of a big city and he needed to keep his wife happy.
They chose a game trail which wound its way through a forest of mixed pine and hardwood: red laurels, cousin to bay and magnolia; sand pines, which she had already vowed to root out and destroy since they were non-native invaders; thick stands of palmetto fronds. Near the middle of the property, the ground took on that spongy feeling peculiar to places where the water table doesn't run far below the surface. Noting the presence of some small pitcher plants, she knelt and pawed through the thick pine needle carpeting. "No one's been here recently," she repeated as she let the rich plant debris sift through her fingers. "No can tabs, candy wrappers, or bottle caps. Oh, what's this?"
He peered curiously over her shoulder and wondered what had caught her attention. She took a cosmetics case out of her purse, selected a brush normally used for applying rouge, and began to brush gently at something in the soil in front of her. "A cypress knee," he guessed. "That'll mean there's swamp or wetland nearby. We won't be able to do much with the property unless we do it by hand."
She continued to brush at the object. Her careful excavations revealed not a cypress knee but a long, gnarled mangrove shaft to which was attached some sort of cobble. He'd never seen stone in Florida before; to his knowledge, aside from the occasional limestone deposit and the one granite quarry near Ocala, there wasn't any here. "Give me your water bottle." Puzzled, he passed it to her and watched as she gently trickled it over the stone in order to wash away the dirt and reveal more detail. "It's a greenstone celt, maybe part of a war club or an atlatl," she told him, her tone reverent.
"Looks like a bunch of sticks and stones to me," he muttered but a sudden thrill went down his back, as though he were being watched by unseen eyes...and they were waiting for him, right or wrong, to make a decision.
Just as quickly as she'd unearthed the artifact, she covered it back up and then kicked the pine duff back over it. "Buy the property," she told him. "If we hurry, we can make it back to the city and sign the papers this afternoon."
"Why?" he asked. "If those are artifacts, the state will be in here in nothing flat. They'll take it." Between that and the fact that they'd discovered a wetland habitat in the middle of the acreage, he'd be hard pressed to even find a place to put their home. It didn't sound like a good idea to him at all.
"It needs protected," she insisted. "We can give them that and much more."
References
Gannon, Michael. The New History of Florida, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 1996.
Milanich, Jerald T. Florida's Indians, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 1998.
Author's Note: Several greenstone celts and other artifacts similar to the ones I have periodically found on our property can be viewed at the Florida Natural History Museum in Gainesville, Florida. It should be noted that, as a private land owner, I do not have to turn over the artifacts nor do I have to allow excavation on the site. I have chosen, for reasons of my own, to leave the site as undisturbed as possible.