Two Rivers: The Upper Ocklawaha

A section of the historic river channel meanders across Ocklawaha Prairie Restoration Area.

Two Rivers

“There are two Oklawaha Rivers today. There is the twisting, unspoiled black-water stream of the Florida Wilderness. And there is the dammed, straightened, Army Engineered desolation of the unfinished Cross-Florida Barge Canal.”

The words above were published by Audubon Magazine in 1970, two years before President Nixon terminated the controversial Cross Florida Barge Canal project. More than half a century later, they still depict an accurate reality of the Ocklawaha River: two distinct forms—one carved through the earth over thousands of years, the other dug by human hands in just a few decades.

The past two months have led me on a series of trips to the upper section of the 74-mile-long river. From the headwaters at Lake Griffin to the confluence with the Silver River, I explored a section of the Ocklawaha that had previously been unfamiliar to me.

With the obvious exception of the Rodman Dam and Reservoir located in the lower section of the river, what I found is that the Upper Ocklawaha, compared to the other sections, seems to resemble more closely the “straightened, Army Engineered” river in the quote above.

My intention was to distill this section of the river into a single post. But despite its rather plain appearance on Google Earth, I discovered that the Upper Ocklawaha flows through a myriad of towns and restoration areas, each rich with its own history. Limiting it to a single post would be the equivalent of damming the river and attempting to control its depth and complexity.

But there is one particular area of the Upper Ocklawaha where these two distinct river forms collide. And it was here that I found myself waist-deep and on the verge of tears.

Ocklawaha Prairie

I almost cried in the swamp.

There’s a section of the historic Ocklawaha River that was bypassed by a canal in the 1920s. The canal straightened the river, providing easier navigation for boats. Labeled “C-212” by St. Johns River Water Management District, the canal is now considered part of the Ocklawaha River. But the bypassed channel still meanders through the Ocklawaha Prairie.

I’ve been fascinated by this section of the Ocklawaha and how it seems to embody both rivers portrayed in the Audubon quote above.

I was photographing it for the second time when I pushed my drone battery too far and had to make an emergency landing. This had happened before, but I’d always managed to land near a trail and retrieve it using the Find My Drone feature. This time, however, I had to land on a shrub in the middle of the Ocklawaha Prairie, and Find My Drone could only get me so far.

The shrub was 500 yards from the trail. Reaching it meant crossing a 3,000-acre wetland—once the original floodplain of the historic river. Any sane person would have called it a loss and gone home. I stashed my camera bag in a nearby bush and climbed in.

It took no time to realize how difficult the mission would be. The historic river channel, which had seemed so peaceful just moments before, now surrounded me. And I found that upon closer inspection it was more wild and hostile than I had imagined.

Every inch forward was anguish. Walls of briar sliced through my legs like razor wire. Each meticulous step sent my boots bubbling into the soft earth below. I stretched awkwardly from grass clump to grass clump to avoid sinking deeper into the unknown. At one point I found snake remains, and from then on I couldn’t stop picturing the water moccasins lurking beneath my feet.

It took me an hour and a half to make it 300 yards. With great effort I eventually reached the cusp of what I considered even remotely navigable. Sketchy had turned to sketchier, and it was only getting worse. The swamp was turning into river. I was waist-deep in muck.

I debated going farther. The Find My Drone feature indicated I was more than halfway. But the last stretch was undoubtedly the worst, and continuing meant almost certainly having to swim.

As I balanced on that final grass clump, fighting to keep myself from sinking deeper in the stinky swamp, the sky grew dark and rain fell. Despair washed over me. All of a sudden I felt alone. Exhausted. Scared to move forward. Scared to turn back. Devastated to go home empty-handed.

The combination of fatigue and the realization of what I had lost made me want to cry. I didn’t care about the drone—I had already considered upgrading. But losing the media was almost too much to bear.

That morning had been one of those special overcast mornings where there was a 99 percent chance the light would amount to nothing and a one percent chance the sun would come out and ignite something magical. It turned out to be the latter. I had just about given up hope when the clouds cleared and the sun set the sky ablaze in orange. I photographed the Ocklawaha River snaking through the layered fog and low clouds, and I knew I had something special. Now nobody would ever see those images.

The trudge back was hell. At least on the way out there existed a small hope of recovering the drone. Now the briar just felt like punishment.

When I finally made it to the parking lot, I was a mess. I felt how the fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea must have felt when, after an excruciating three-day battle with the fish, he returned to land with nothing but its skeleton—sharks had consumed the rest.

On second thought, maybe I felt more like the fish.

I was at the truck rinsing my legs with my water bottle when a red SUV pulled up beside me and a man exited the vehicle. “You look like you lost a battle,” he said.

I looked up and half-smiled. It felt like I had lost the war.

Taken with my phone at the end of my adventure in the swamp.

Inner Wilderness

There are parallels between the river and the human condition I’ve come to appreciate. The more I explore it, the more I see a haunting reflection of myself.

During the week I stand at a desk—upright, shirt tucked. Optimized. But on the inside the wilderness twists and turns, and I find the days filled with a deeper longing for that next brief moment when I get to tap in and flow freely again.

As I traced the straightened sections of the Upper Ocklawaha, I couldn’t help but wonder how much more of the river would have been destroyed if not for the conservation efforts of Marjorie Harris Carr. She, along with a group of volunteers, fought to stop the Cross Florida Barge Canal and, in doing so, helped preserve what remains of the wild Ocklawaha.

The power of one person to inspire such change gives me hope—hope not only for what can be protected, but hope for what can be restored. Hope for what can still find its way back.

A part of me hopes the river will lead me somewhere, though I cannot yet say where. Perhaps just to a place of understanding. Perhaps to a place where I, too, can contribute in some meaningful way to the awareness and conservation of this river and state.