Lost in the Okefenokee Swamp

 Recently, The Professor and I had the privilege of joining Ecology students and their professor on a trip to the Okefenokee Swamp.

I say privilege now but at the time, my shoulders didn't quite agree that it was a privilege. You see, the point of the trip was to canoe through the Okefenokee, twenty-five miles over the course of three days, to be exact. And a little more for some of us. But I'm getting a little ahead of the story. 

It all began bright and early on a Thursday morning...more like dark and early. Four o'clock kind of early. At least, that's when the alarm went off, rousing The Professor and I out of our warm bed. We threw what was left to be taken into the back of the university van and took off with eight canoes in tow. 

We pulled into the Hickman Science Center parking lot thirty minutes before departure time. Silhouettes of hunched over students carrying camping supplies, boxes of cereal and Ramen, and suitcases, shuffled back-and-forth between their vehicles and the other van with a trailer attached. 

"You've got twenty minutes!" yelled the Ecology professor. 

Then, "You've got ten minutes!"

Then, "The van is rolling out." Students hopped on board as the van began rolling. We rolled out behind. 

The drive was silent as tired students slept.

Eight hours later, we arrived at the Okefenokee Swamp. Looking forward to a reprieve from sitting, I eagerly hopped out of the van just in time to hear the Ecology professor barking orders. 

"Alright, guys! I need you to start unloading canoes and carry them down to the water's edge.  The Professor and Dale, I need you guys to drive the van with the trailer to the campsite. Dale will direct you. As soon as they get back, we'll hit the water."

While we waited on The Professor and Dale, the students learned the art of canoe lifting and holding it steady as they brought each one down to the ground. I stood at the water's edge and oohed at the alligator swimming in lazy circles less than a hundred feet away from me. 

Soon, The Professor and Dale returned and we claimed canoes, life vests and oars, then launched out into the water to undertake what would wind up being a four hour trip. 

Excitement rippled from canoe to canoe as we spotted the first alligator on land, perfectly posed. Hands held phones up in front of faces and pictures after pictures were taken to be uploaded to iNaturalist. 

 

Open waterways became more and more narrow, forcing us to slow down as we navigated twists, turns and small, floating "blow-ups" or "batteries" in the middle of the waterways. Some of the more eager and energetic students powered through the wider waterways only to find themselves running aground while The Professor and I, a bit slower, glided past them. 

At the end, canoes were rinsed and loaded, then off to camp we went where we began the task of setting up tents, making supper and preparing for bed. 

The next morning, we took down tents and packed everything away. We pulled out of the campsite at eight o'clock. The van was again silent as we made the hour long drive to the other, Northern, side of the Okefenokee. Once again, orders were barked for students to unload canoes and by nine-thirty, we were navigating through water to take in more of what Okefenokee had to offer in sights and sounds. 

Here, the landscape was not quite as lush as the day before, though there were a few scraggly trees and lots of clumps of yellow flowers, whose names I do not know. 

Eight hours later we dragged into camp, shoulders sore and quite hungry since we had failed to bring our lunch with us in the canoe like we were supposed to. Kind students, the Ecology professor and Dale pooled their food together and fed the Professor and me, carrying us through the rest of the long journey. Come to find out, along the Okefenokee Swamp waterways, there are covered platforms and "bathrooms" for day travelers and campers. 

We, again, set up camp. After supper, we gathered around the campfire, listened to stories and sang songs. 

The next morning, we enjoyed a break from canoeing and headed to Jekyll Island. 

Ocean waves sparkled under the rays of bright sunshine. 

Students meandered along the three different beaches we visited on Jekyll Island, searching for as many creatures possible to upload to iNaturalist. A total of 150 images, we were told by one student, uploaded to iNaturalist was the assignment for this trip. But the pictures couldn't be a careless snapshot. They were to be the best possible photos and deemed research grade within the scientific community on iNaturalist. 

They found quite a few things, the most memorable ones being from Driftwood Beach. 

We returned to camp, tired but relaxed after a day of exploration and playing in the water. We were ready for the next leg of our exploration by canoe. 

By eight o'clock the next morning, we were on the water and this time, The Professor and I had our lunches. 

The scenery this time was more prairie-like with few trees and the little that were there, were short and thin. Lily pads were plentiful, as were pitcher plants and bladderwort.

Now comes the parts of the story that will always stick in our memory and make us laugh. 

We had all been leisurely paddling for quite a while and it was now about four o'clock in the afternoon. Students had wizened up and formed a flotilla of four canoes which allowed students in the two middle canoes a chance to rest. Every so often, they would switch the canoes around so that the ones in the middle were then on the outside and vice versa. Pretty clever and made for some good laughs as they sang goofy songs. 

Eventually, the waterways became more narrow and the flotilla had to break apart. One by one, we passed by ibises, carnivorous plants and alligators. 

One rule of the canoe trip was that if the first few canoes made a turn, then the last canoe in that group was to wait and let the rest of the canoers who were straggling behind, know. And it had been faithfully adhered to up to this point. But you know how it goes, people get used to something and begin relaxing the rules. 

Unfortunately, The Professor and I were part of the slow group. Well, we weren't actually slow, we had simply gotten distracted by an egret, and a beautiful one it was! Three students in one canoe snapped pictures, Dale and the student with him waited patiently because they were the designated last canoe in the group. Once the students were done, we resumed our rowing. 

Within a few minutes, we came to a split. Not a two-way split. A four-way split. The three students in the one canoe thought we should go left, The Professor and I said we should go straight, and Dale thought we should go right. All of us had zilch cell service. The Professor consulted his downloaded Google map and asserted we should go straight, but Dale insisted we should go right because he had seen the highlighted path we were to take on the Ecology Professor's map and it showed a right turn at some point. Besides, he had done a lot of navigating while working in the mission field so he was experienced at these kinds of things. The Professor and I decided to go with Dale's decision, not because we thought he was right but because he was so insistent, we knew it would be very difficult to convince him otherwise. 

So, we took the right turn. Straight into a headwind. With each stroke, my shoulders ached and my hands protested, but we doggedly moved forward in the direction Dale was taking us because, after all, the sun sets in the west, that's the direction we were supposed to be going in and the sun was directly in front of us. Every minute or so, The Professor would lay down his oar and consult the map.

"I'm telling you, everything on this map is indicating that we're going in the wrong direction. We're going further away from where we started and it isn't curving back around. The canal we started from is behind us," he would say each time he consulted the map. "He's not taking into the account the shift of the sun now that we are in the autumn season."

"Then tell him," I would reply, but both not wanting to rock the boat, we remained quiet and continued the arduous work of paddling until The Professor would pull out his phone again.

Finally, I yelled, for we were a good ways behind the other two canoes. 

"Hey, guys! Stop!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, but the wind swept my words away. We continued paddling but a few moments later we stopped again as The Professor consulted the map. Again, he confirmed we were going the wrong way. This time, we both yelled. 

"Hey! Stop!" They heard us and both canoes stopped. We pulled up beside them and Aaron told them what he was seeing. Dale again insisted we had to be going in the right direction because we were going west like the sun, which was where we needed to go. 

Thankfully, Dale had a tiny bit of cell service so he called the Ecology professor.

"Oh, so we were supposed to go straight when we came to that four-way?" we heard him say on his end. The Professor and I glanced over at each other. "So, turn around and go back to the four-way but instead of taking a right, go straight because it's a shortcut to the canal? Okay." And he hung up. "Well, we gotta turn around and go straight at the four-way," he told us, as though he wasn't surprised. 

And we did. A long mile or so, but at least with the wind behind us that time. 

We were paddling along, chatting, pointing out plants and critters when a scream broke the calm. 

"Get it out of the boat!" 

We turned to see the student who had been sitting in the middle of the canoe  of three students was now standing, the canoe teetering from side to side. 

"Sit down or you're going to dump us into the water!" said the girl in the front. 

"But the fish, it's flopping around and it's freaking me out! Get it out of here!" he yelled again as he spread his legs and planted his feet along the sides of the canoe. The girl and the other guy in the canoe began laughing when they saw him grinning despite his yelling. 

"I can't believe you're freaked out by a fish," the girl laughed as she reached down and picked up the fish. "How do I hold it?" she asked with a panicked expression on her face as the fish wriggled it's way out of her hand, causing the guy in the middle to dance again. 

"You can pick it up by it's mouth," I told her, not realizing it had teeth. She followed my advice and quickly released it. 

"It bit my finger! It has teeth!" she yelped. 

"I'm so sorry. I didn't think about it having teeth! You okay?" I asked her. 

"I'm fine. It's not bad at all. It just freaked me out," she replied with a grin, then proceeded to pick the fish up again by it's middle. She managed to hang on to it long enough for The Professor to snap a picture. The guy in the middle visibly relaxed when she released the fish back into the water, while the rest of laughed and laughed at the girl having to rescue the guy from the big bad fish. 

The rest of the canoe trip that day was uneventful and we arrived about an hour after the other canoe group. 

After that experience, whenever the Ecology professor said we canoed twenty-five miles, those of us who got lost are quick to remind him that we actually paddled more than they did. 

While canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp is not something I would have thought to put on a bucket list of things to do, I'm glad we did it and I would do it all over again, minus getting lost.