A Walk in a Creek & the Woods

A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk with a friend in the Sweetwater Preserve right at the southern city limits of Gainesville. The 125-acre property was recently acquired by Alachua County Forever, our awesome county land conservation program that I volunteer with.


We were going to walk on the trails, but as we stood looking at the creek I thought back to my childhood and thought maybe we could recreate the feeling of those endless hours watching turtles, crawdads, minnows, tadpoles, and frogs and searching for shark's teeth, arrowheads, and anything else of interest.

We took off our shoes, rolled up our jeans, and climbed down the least-eroded part of the bank into the creek.


The water was low, and we sloshed downstream in shin-deep water.


I hoped we'd see a snake. This is perfect water moccasin habitat. Not that I want to encounter a moccasin -- just see one.


But the creek was a disappointment. The banks were severely eroded.


Tiny pieces of broken glass were embedded in the sand. Trash snagged in exposed tree roots. It was depressing. And the thing is, you could tell that glass and trash wasn't dumped there. It had washed there from upstream. (More on this later.)

The only life -- the only life -- we saw was an invasive nine-banded armadillo. No snakes. No minnows. No tadpoles. No turtles. No birds!!

Disheartened, we decided to try the woods. We climbed out of the water and went walking barefoot on the trails.


And guess what we saw?


Nothing. No life. Except, of course, nine-banded armadillos. The best part of the walk was the autumn color.


So, what gives?

Gainesville is covered by a network of creeks, many of which have been paved or built over. One of my best friends is the creeks coordinator for the city. She told me that the remainder are so polluted that they can't be saved. Evidently, our sewage treatment plant dumps treated wastewater into the creeks. This water is full of nutrients, which suck all the oxygen out of the water, starving plants and animals. This is totally legal.

Gainesville's stormwater, on the other hand, is not treated. Anything on the streets, sidewalks, etc., that gets washed or dumped or thrown or blown into storm drains goes straight into our creeks.

I still remember the day my creek died. I was about ten. I grew up playing in Hogtown Creek in a less-developed part of my neighborhood. One day, we noticed houses were being built along the creek. The development was to be called "Mill Pond." There was no pond, as far as I know. What there was was a clear, healthy, life-filled creek. And they built right up to the edge of that creek.

One weekend a friend and I rode bikes down there to spend a few hours catching minnows and tadpoles, and the creek stank. The water was filled with green slime, and the sand along the edges was orange. There were no animals, no fish, no invertebrates. I tried going back a few times, but nothing ever changed. I figure that development company threw some new lawns out, applied a bunch of fertilizer, and whatever was extra just washed into the creek, killing everything that was there.

When I wrote the city about how sad my recent visit to Sweetwater Creek made me, I was advised to wash my hands after playing in my hometown's creeks. Apparently, I could catch any number of feces-related diseases.

Sometimes, a walk in the woods isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Beach Day

This weekend I went to St. Augustine Beach with some friends. I got sunburned. (Yes, I used sunscreen -- 30 SPF. It was very hot and bright.) We played in the waves like five-year-olds.


Florida has the best beaches! After living in Seattle and L.A., I will never take our beaches for granted again.


I haven't been feeling terribly inspired to write in this blog lately, but don't give up on me. I'm sure I will return to being more diligent about posting soon.

Northern Light

I always forget how different the quality of the light is up north. But I can't really explain how. Our first day at the conference, we walked downtown to eat dinner. The walk was along a bay on Lake Michigan. It was gorgeous.

It sprinkled as we walked along a canal.


Then a rainbow came out. I haven't seen one of those in a while.


Our hotel room was right on the bay. Kim and I watched the sun go down several nights.


The gloaming might have been my favorite time of day, though.

Getting Away

Another beautiful and relaxing weekend in St. Pete.


I got sunburned.

The Casualties Mount

Well, I did my part to save water, and this is the thanks I get. Here are some of the plants I've killed or severely injured in the past month or two.

Swedish Ivy at work (almost impossible to kill; I worked hard for this one):


Here's an African violet I just retrieved from the ICU (my mother's greenhouse). It's already looking half-dead. How do I do it? It's just a natural talent, I tell you.


Here's a sad lineup outside my back door. There's waxy begonia, two Florida violets, and some other dead or semi-dead stuff.


Firebush and blue-eyed grass.


Gotta get the herbs in on this action. Here are some dirt and sticks formerly known as Mexican cilantro and mint.


Winter annuals. Well, let's face it, their time had come anyway.


Stupid ferns. Why do you always need to get "watered"? Why can't you just take care of yourself? Why must I always do everything???


Et tu, scarlet salvia?


Crispy blue phlox, like French fries.


I watered yesterday for the first time in a couple of weeks. I wonder how many of them will come back? I've been nurturing most of them for years. You'd think they'd be a little more forgiving, but nooooo. Jeesh.

They Call It "Influent" (I Call It a River of Poo)

Yesterday I saw a lot of poo.

I'm a member of a working group that looks at issues around the Lower Santa Fe River (which is actually where I went canoeing last week), and the head of the working group often arranges for us to take cool field trips to look at springs, sinkholes, and other water-related things.

This time we went to the City of High Springs Wastewater Treatment Plant. High Springs is a historic town about twenty miles north-ish of Gainesville, and it's right up on the Santa Fe River. It has never had a wastewater treatment plant until now. If you know anything about Florida's geography, you can probably guess the sinister implications of this: people's poo was just going straight into the river, basically.

Now, don't get me wrong. People had septic tanks. But the city manager told us that in 1895, say, a person would build a house and put a septic tank below the empty lot next door. Later, that empty lot would be built on. And people didn't know where their sewage was going.

They assumed, like all of us tend to, that when their toilets flushed their poo went far, far away. In reality, it was going below their neighbor's house -- and then sometimes coming up into their neighbor's house. Or entering the septic tank, and then leaving it through leaks. And then entering the river. Where tons of animals and plants live, and where hundreds of thousands of people swim, canoe, and tube every year. Or, somewhat more sinisterly, entering the aquifer, which is where our drinking water gets pumped from.

And they know this because when they got houses on the new sewer system and went to pump out their septic tanks and fill them with concrete? A lot of them were completely empty.

Ew.

Some people in High Springs have wanted a wastewater treatment plant since 1957, but they had to wait until 2004.

Here's the gigantor tank where all the poo comes in and is sorted, so to speak.


If I understood correctly, these are poo-chopping machines. Somehow they chop up the poo so it can fit through pipes.


This is what you see as you walk up the stairs to the poo tank.


It looked just like the river of chocolate in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Remember? The one that that one kid fell in, because he was so greedy? "Scrumdidilyumptious."


Some parts looked more like a river than others. Other parts looked like a lot of frothy poo. There was a reason for this ... something about the solids and the treating of the water, but ... yeah, I don't really remember what was said. I was too busy staring at the poo churning three feet below me. Thousands and thousands of gallons of churning, flowing poo.


It smelled a lot less than you would guess (although I still gagged a couple of times). Apparently the poo is "air-pumped," meaning air is pumped into the bottom, to keep the "solids" from just settling there permanently and to introduce bacteria that help break the poo down.


I was having bad anxiety that I was going to fall in, or drop my camera or sunglasses into the river of poo. We were on these narrow catwalks looking down into the poo. It was pretty stressful after a minute or two. That much poo is absolutely overwhelming. And it's only the poo of around 1,200 people! Imagine New York's poo river. Once you start thinking like that, it's hard to stop.


I have to insert some unsolicited advice here: if you ever get the chance to talk to a wastewater treatment employee, ask them what kinds of stuff they've found in the "influent." The range of disgusting and bizarre (and large!) 0bjects will surprise you -- and the employee might have some opinions that have not occurred to you, like "Plastic tampon applicators should be banned!"

A River Runs Through It

I've been absent because I've been busy, but not with all things sustainable.

But Wednesday I took the day off work and went kayaking with my friend Rayne and her friend Caimee, who was visiting from North Carolina. We went down the Santa Fe River. It was BEAUTIFUL!! It was cool and perfectly sunny, with a little breeze that was a wee bit chilly.


We saw:
--tons of turtles (of course)
--anhinga
--two red-shouldered hawks
--great blue herons
--little blue herons
--pileated woodpeckers
--white egrets
--limpkins
--kingfishers
--ducks
--a million vultures (creepy)
--one naked man

We even heard a few barred owls (around 4 o'clock)! I didn't see any algae, water lettuce, or water hyacinth to speak of, which is good. We saw two -- two!! -- canoes the entire time, two boats, and no swimmers -- just scuba divers in Ginnie Springs. The river was basically ours, for twelve entire miles!

I should explain the naked man.

There's a spring, called Lily Spring, that's privately owned. It's on a little side jaunt off the Santa Fe. You can see the kayaks we rented.


A nudist named Ed lives there.


He takes care of the property and hangs out with canoeists and kayakers. He's a nice guy.

Another person we met was Verniss (sp?), this very opinionated guy who runs Ichetucknee Canoe and Cabins. He cares a lot about the river.


They 'like' quotation marks "a lot" "there."

It was a perfect day. I'll post more photos as soon as Caimee e-mails me hers.