The snapping of the plastic cap is a foreign sound in the swamp. It causes a turkey vulture to abandon his roost directly above Ryan’s head. The beating of its wings startles Ryan into a silent crouch. He has not been silent for quite some time.
He drinks half of the first bottle and remaining still he hears the drone of the yellow flies and mosquitoes just outside the barrier of the bug spray. He hears the rustling of the wind high above in the treetops. He hears a faint splashing in the swamp, and he looks to see a strange sight.
A ball of fur the size of a dog is bouncing in and out of the swamp. It jumps forward, and then for no apparent reason it falls backward. It does this with a steady but fast motion. Ryan cannot process what he is seeing until he approaches it. He has to get within a few feet and then he realizes what he is looking at. It’s a fawn caught in a small circle of hog-wire fence. No telling how long it had been caught in this trap. Being startled by Ryan it felt it had to run for its life—but it was going nowhere.
The circle is no bigger than two feet across and the hog-wire fence is made of squares. The fawn is jumping and putting his head into one of the squares, and the fence is pushing him back. He does this with continuous motion and doesn’t stop even when Ryan approaches to within one foot. The fawn’s heart is beating out of its chest. Ryan tries to calm it down.
“Easy boy, easy now,” he says, “calm down, we got to get you out of there.” The fawn does not calm down and continues the ceaseless jumping, making Ryan nervous as to what he should do.
And then it came.
A deep growl from a distance echoed through the swamp. Ryan looks back at the path with a growing uneasiness.
The panther was on the move.
Still believing that Ryan was out to hurt him—the fawn continued jumping. Ryan has an idea. If he leaves the fawn the panther’s hunger will be satisfied and Ryan can spend the night with one less worry. It is a tough decision to make.
“It’s nature’s way and after all who am I to get involved with Mother Nature?” he says as he walks around in circles, waving his arms about, fretting the decision.
“That’s it I’m going,” and he takes a bearing and marches off leaving the struggling fawn behind to become a tasty meal for a hungry panther. Fifty-feet later he stops and looks back. The fawn continued jumping with his heart beating wildly, all he wants is a chance. Only Ryan, can give him that chance. Ryan begins to see himself in the struggling fawn. He has another idea.
“I have a chance,” he says, “Somebody needs to give you one, and besides, your scent could lead him off my trail.”
Ryan walks back and immediately rips down the hog wire fence and sets the fawn free. “Run little one, and don’t stop running until you’re far away from here.” It bounds through the swamp, stops to look back as if to say thank you, then shakes its coat and vanishes into the swamp.
Ryan continues on course and on time to make the Oklawaha River by dark, but he is growing a little leery now as he has yet to find “no-name” creek. The mind can play tricks on you. You begin to ask yourself. “Are my instruments telling me the truth?” It happens to pilots flying in the clouds. It happens to scuba divers at great depths. You must trust your instruments. The doubt nags at Ryan when up ahead he notices a thinning in the trees. He hears the rushing of water. He ties a ribbon on a tree and heads in a hurry towards the sound.
At last he has found “no-name” creek!
What a wonderful sight it is. Not only because of its beauty, but because it proves that he has navigation skills.
“Oh, yes!” Ryan says joyfully lifting the little GPS unit high into the air. He felt as though he were a great explorer landing on the beach of a new found country. His confidence is fully restored in his instruments. He will never doubt them again. Now to cross the creek and then one half mile more and he can make camp on the banks of the Oklawaha River.
He pauses before crossing to secure his backpack and to take-in the change of scenery. He does not know the depth of the creek for the water is dark. The creek is twenty-feet in width, the size of your average city street. The flow is steady. On the other side more sweet gum swamp. Ryan moves out into the creek.
The first few steps reveal a hard sandy bottom. Red-belly pan fish and minnows scurry for the safety of the creeks center. Ryan makes for the middle. He cannot see very far downstream as the creek makes a sharp bend. He pauses in the warm “goo” of the creeks center. Looking upstream he can see for a great distance. It looks like a painting.
The ducks go to-and-fro, yellow and purple flowers sway gently in the breeze. An otter frolics near the shore. With hands that appear to be human it works at opening a freshwater oyster. Yes everything above the water looks picturesque, but under the water it is a much different story.
People often wonder how is it that such a hideous creature as a leach can attach itself to your skin and start sucking blood without you feeling it. The answer lies in the antiseptic they produce before they bite. They apply it to your skin, kind of like a dentist when he uses a cotton swab before he sticks you with a needle. You don’t feel the needle; you don’t feel the leach, or leaches.
Down under the water, in the muck surrounding Ryan’s legs the leaches are searching. They are searching for the source of the heat and the motion. Four of them find a host from which they will feed. There are now two leaches on each of Ryan’s legs. They are below his knees and inside his pants. It will be some time before he discovers them.
After taking a moment to enjoy the view Ryan continues across the creek. Once again he feels the hard sandy bottom and once again the red-bellied pan fish and minnows scurry for safety as Ryan exits the far side of the creek. He looks back to admire his beautiful line of ribbons fading off into the distance from which he came.
He knows he can lead the way back to his father now—without a fancy gadget. He figures he will be right here at this point at around three o’clock tomorrow leading the rescue party in. He looks ahead with anticipation. Just ten more ribbons, or a half-a-mile, and he should be at the Oklawaha River. He starts moving through the knee deep water of the sweet gums. The shadows are growing longer as the light continues to fade.
With five ribbons tied and only five more to go until he reaches the river he moves with a sense of confidence now. He finishes tying the fifth ribbon and picking up his machete he hears a hammering noise not far away.
TAP, TAP, TAP—TAP, TAP, TAP. He envisions a man with a hammer. The swamp noises can play tricks on you. It sounds so close, and with the possibility of finding help he decides to make a quick detour.
He makes a hard left and walks in the direction of the hammering. His mind is running wild with the thought of finding someone who could help him. Maybe it’s the man who helped him out of the hole. He has only gone a short distance when he comes across a small pond full of waist high “pitcher-plants.” He had only read about these plants in his biology class, seeing them now gives him the creeps!
The pitcher-plant is just one of many carnivorous or meat-eating plants that thrive in the wetlands and swamps. They have adapted to eating meat because the soil is too poor to provide enough nutrients to sustain life. Some pitcher-plants are big enough to eat rats! He must wade through them to get to the source of the hammering. About halfway across the pond he peels back the hood on one of the plants and looks inside to see what it has caught to eat. He sees a lizard, some flies, and a half digested tree frog. Releasing the plant he shudders at the thought of what it must be like to be eaten by a plant!
The hammering stops as he looks around. Then it starts up again and he spots the source.
Up ahead in a dead tree is a giant woodpecker. It is the pileated woodpecker, the largest in all of North America. Ryan should be upset that it’s not a man, but instead he is mesmerized by its beauty, its striking red cap and black and white stripes—along with its odd looking feet. Most birds have three toes forward and one back, but the woodpecker has two forward and two back, making him m
uch more at home on the side of a tree. Ryan watches as he leans back on his stiff tail feathers using them like a chair. TAP, TAP, TAP—TAP, TAP, TAP. He drills a hole, and then with his long beak and sticky tongue, pulls out an insect.
“You fooled me this time Woody,” Ryan says, “It won’t happen again.”
Ryan turns around in the pond and makes the short walk back to the path. Looking back he says, “It wasn’t a total waste of time, I got to see some cool stuff,” and as he continued brushing and walking he thinks about how interesting the swamp is, and maybe not so scary and dangerous after all. But Oh! How a person’s opinion can change in just a moments time.
With the next two ribbons Ryan progresses through the knee deep sweet gum swamp with ease. He ties the seventh of ten ribbons on a cypress tree as the sweet gums are giving way to cypress. The swamp is only ankle deep now as the ground is rising to meet the banks of the river. He looks ahead to try and see a tell-tale sign, but at seven hundred and fifty feet it is too far away. He reaches in the backpack and pulls out the water bottle and after dropping it bends over to pick it up. His hand brushes a lump just above his ankle and rolling his pant leg up he exposes one of the blood gorged leaches. He screams.
“Get it off me! Get it of me! ” he shakes his leg violently but it does no good. He grabs it and squeezing it, rips the leach off of his leg—the blood pours down. He stares at the wound in disbelief. It burns with pain as he splashes water on the wound. He wants the bleeding to stop but it takes time—leaches secrete an enzyme to keep the blood from clotting. Ryan has never seen a leach, nor does he know how to properly remove one.
Never squeeze it. Squeezing causes the leach to vomit bacteria into the wound which may cause an infection. You should slip your finger or a knife blade under the mouth and lift it off without squeezing it. Once off the bleeding slows as the blood clots. Removing a leach is harder on the mind than the wound. Later, Ryan will have three more chances to improve his removal technique.
He wraps one of the socks from the backpack around the wound. He thought about using the first aid kit but decided it should wait until he makes camp. He did not want to drop any of its contents into the swamp. With gritted teeth he presses on.
It’s not the wound that’s the concern now, but rather the very traceable trail of blood that he will leave behind—leading to his campsite. Not to mention three more bleeding wounds, soon to be exposed to the danger of the drifting night air.
Chapter Fourteen
The last of the ribbons went very well for Ryan. His greatest discomfort, other than the leach bite, was that he felt as though he were a walking “blood-bag” to the various biting insects. This misery was soon dispelled by the shallow water giving way to dry ground. The dank and dense gum tree swamp gave way to a more spacious and airy cluster of large cypress trees. This, together with the fact that the ground was rising, told Ryan that he was about to come upon a large body of water. With the GPS meter ticking down to 2.1 miles—he crested the rising grade and stood looking in awe at the mighty and majestic Oklawaha River!
“Yes, I have made the river, and feel that breeze!” Ryan said to the wind blowing in from the river.
He is on one side of a seventy five foot wide dry and level embankment, perhaps eight feet above the river. A few feet in front of him lay a well-worn path which runs off to the left and to the right. He walks across the path to the other side of the embankment and stops to look down. It is thirty feet further to the river, ten feet of slope to the water’s edge, and then twenty feet of large towering cypress trees before reaching the river channel. The river made a soothing lapping sound, breaking on the toe of the slope. Ryan is set back from view of any immediate boat traffic. As his father had told him it would be difficult if not impossible to be seen and heard from a passing boat.
His father had never mentioned the well-worn path along the embankment. That is because his father believed that it was made by people looking for a place to fish or hunt, but it was not a trail made by humans. It was a game trail used by every imaginable creature that lived along the river basin. In the daytime, except for the occasional wild pig or otter, it was mostly deserted. But in the nighttime as Ryan was soon to find out, the path became a highway.
The Oklawaha River is a winding odyssey of wild and scenic beauty. It was used in the 19th century for transportation by steamboat. These steamboats were narrow, tall, and luxurious. They carried such dignitaries as, Ulysses S. Grant, and Thomas A. Edison as they made their way to the Silver Springs. Today—with its abundant wildlife—it is used for fishing, hunting, and canoeing, as well as for sightseeing tours.
Ryan wants so much to take in the view and to get to know his camp area but he is disciplined enough to know it will have to wait until after the firewood is gathered. He picks a spot near the river side of the embankment, away from the swamp and the well-worn path. He gathers some stones and lays them out in a circle for a fire pit. He cuts palm fronds off of the low growing palmettos that grow along the top of the embankment. He lays these out like a huge blanket and sets his backpack on them. He gathers small sticks and medium sticks. He even gathers some good size logs. He notices there are plenty of fallen trees and floating logs for which he can use to float his backpack across when the time comes. It was too early to start the fire so he sits down on the blanket of palm fronds. It’s time to get out of the wet clothes. He pulls the extra pair of pants, shirt, and the remaining sock out of the backpack. After changing his shirt he pulls off his pants and in so doing Ryan spots the leaches.
“Gross!” he says with disgust, “you blood sucking devils.”
He does not freak-out this time. He calmly reaches for the machete and with its tip, slides it along the length of their blood gorged bodies until he finds their mouths. They came off with an easy flick of the blade. They were full, and within minutes would have dropped off to digest. But that does not stop Ryan from gathering them into a small ball just off his palm frond blanket where with the unison chopping of his machete and a yell that went, “Die, Die, Die,” he turned them into a muddy bloody pile of goo. Using his machete he flung their remains down the embankment and sitting down he tends to his leg wounds.
Digging through the backpack he finds the first-aid kit and after applying antibiotic suave, he wraps the wounds with gauze. It would be several hours before the blood would clot. He spreads the contents of the backpack out on the blanket and takes an inventory, and in so doing finds the digital camera.
“Cool, I’ve got to snap some pictures.” he says.
He powers it up, the batteries are good, but then it flashes a message, “memory-card full.”
“That’s a bummer,” he said, tossing the camera onto the blanket.
He eats some beef-jerky and a granola bar and then drinks some water from the opened bottle. He reclines on the blanket and relaxes for the first time since he and his dad were flying high above this scenic wilderness. Ryan takes in the view from his camp area.
Ryan’s camp is on the inside of a horseshoe curve of the river. It is tucked-in behind the towering cypress. To look directly across the two hundred foot wide river channel, is to look south towards his destination. The river water is dark. Oklawaha means “dark water.” The water hyacinths drift slowly by. The fish swirl the water as they pluck freshwater shrimp from beneath them. On the far side the towering cypress trees again grow well into the river. Ryan wonders if there is an embankment on the other side.
“Wow! I’m going to have to swim that tomorrow,” he says, “maybe I’ll be lucky and catch a boat.”
To the east and downstream on Ryan’s left, there are wood-ducks paddling lazily along the shore. Clouds of mayflies are suspended above the river making a tasty meal for the swallows as they dart in and out, having their fill. Not too far downstream the river makes a bend to the right.
To the west and upstream on Ryan’s right an otter plays with her pups on a small sandy beach on the far side of the river. The sun is touching t
he tops of the cypress trees turning them red as though they were about to catch fire. The river sparkles in the setting sun. Not very far away the river takes a bend to the left.
High above an osprey drifts in the evening currents trying to spot the last meal of the day. The starlings in small formations make their way towards the setting sun as they do every evening. It’s time to roost. Nature is wrapping up for the day and preparing for the night.
The lighting of the fire went very well as he lit the tinder and then the small sticks. In a short time Ryan had a roaring fire with plenty of logs to add throughout the night. The golden embers drift into the evening sky. Ryan watched them disappear above his head, blending into the amber sky. He now has a sense of belonging, and not so much like a foreigner in a far-off land. Then he hears something in the distance. It started low but now it’s growing louder.
“What is that?” Ryan says spinning around in a circle trying to determine its direction. “That doesn’t sound like an animal,” he said as he pauses motionless, straining to hear it. “That’s a motorboat!”
The fisherman in his little john boat has but one thing on his mind. Get to the boat ramp before dark. With his eyes fixed keenly ahead on the winding river channel he squints into the setting sun. With his hand holding the throttle wide open he tries to squeeze every bit of horsepower out of the little two stroke engine. It answers with a deafening howl. The cypress trees fly-by like a picket fence. It would take a gunshot at just the precise moment to get his attention but that doesn’t stop Ryan from trying.
Ryan starts down the embankment right side up but in his hurry he is tripped up and tumbles down head-over-heels. He stops at the water’s edge just in time to look up and see the speeding fisherman going by, and through the twenty-feet of cypress trees he yells as loud as he can.
“Hey, stop!” and just for moment the fisherman turns his head but then he very quickly turns it back thinking he had mistakenly heard something. Ryan stood at the toe of the slope watching through the trees as the boat faded away. He understood all too well now what his father meant when he said it would be nearly impossible to get someone’s attention.
6 Miles With Courage Page 5