Someday back, not that long past, I took a journey to Chiefland, to Bill`s Barbeque for breakfast. Willie, who lives in Rosewood, and I often meet there at first break. Willie was a firefighter for the state fifty or so years back. Stories we share are rich and full. A couple days a week, Willie goes to the golf course. I travel to Manatee Springs for a morning in the park. The Park opens at eight o`clock. That day, the ranger in the station knew who I was from some articles he had read in high school. After graduating from Cedar Key School, he joined the military and served in Iraq. He grew up as an outdoors person so he was a natural as a ranger in the Florida Park Service. I did not know him but we traded stories until duty called him back to work. He loved the parks that had natural springs such as that at Manatee. Taking my leave, I drive the paved road past the camping areas to the parking lot near the springs. I go slowly with the windows down. You can hear and smell as well as see the surroundings better that way. I pass several white tail deer, some ignoring me and some curiously watching. None seem scared. Some of them are large, but in general, they are multi-sized. All are wearing their red coats. Some are eating the lower leaves and the grapes on the vines along the way. I pass a long, thin tall prickly plant. This type of woody, spiny, growths are commonly known as Devil`s walking sticks. At times of the year they are adorned with bouquets of flowers at the top. Until recently, I had never noticed them. Now I see them everywhere. I arrive at the parking area. Engine off, I stay in the car listening and seeing. I hear grey squirrels clicking, barking and squawking. Finally I spot them moving through the trees in the air and on the ground. Some are burying nuts still in their shells to be reclaimed in the winter and at other times when food is scarce. I notice a sound hard to identify at first. Then a mild commotion from the shrubs becomes visible. A couple of deer are back in there sneezing and snorting. They keep that up for a short while and then together, they show themselves and move on. Interesting. I`m out of the car now, moving toward the spring. Water is bubbling at about a hundred million gallons a day. I feel the cooler air down near the water. The temperature of this blue-green water is about seventy-two. There are two elderly women swimming in the spring. These two women swim together nearly every day in the year. I hear some birds now, hawks, kites and woodpeckers, lots of woodpeckers, ladder-backs, red bellied, sap suckers, pileated (much like the cartoon character called "Woody"), and several others most easily recognized by their calls. Somewhere nearby unseen is a barred owl. He is alone, no companion. Then his head turns toward me and I spot the motion. He is huge, one eye fully opened, the other closed. He`s high up in a large mature oak. The rings around the owl`s eyes are really not part of the eye. Those rings catch sounds and funnel them to tiny ears. I walk along a wooden causeway-bridge over the swamp adjacent to the water draining to the Suwannee River. For a long while I watch the large prehistoric sturgeons as they jump clearing the water and flopping back into the river. After several months in the river, the sturgeons finally return to the Gulf, having lost a large portion of body weight; they don`t eat while in fresh water. Though much longer in time the sojourn of the sturgeon is over. And I end mine and return to Cedar Key, hopefully to resume my journey in a couple weeks. Maybe these thoughts will encourage you to take your own sojourn to Manatee Springs. I hope you will share yours with me as we search again for Trouble in Cedar Key.
Email Trouble at: tnckgebe@yahoo.com | 
