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Volunteeers working the blue trail in Big Cyprus.
I am the advance scout. I sneak through the overgrown path, selecting tall trees to tie a yellow ribbon around, not to welcome soldiers home but to guide my party forward. Being in front has its advantages. A live white cloud manifests into the sky. A fury of feathers and squawks, as I disturb a rookery a hundred yards to my right, and a flock of egrets and herons suddenly take wing. Behind me, three new friends attack with loppers the palmetto fronds straying into the trail, tossing aside cut vegetation. We are clearing a path for the Florida Trail Association.
Last Saturday I joined fourteen other hikers from the Happy Hoofers Club, the Broward chapter of the Florida Trail Association, to clear a section of the Florida Trail. We focused on section two in Big Cyprus, mostly on clearing side trails. Like a fool I forgot to bring my own tool, and so I marked trail – the yellow trail that went east-west, hooking up the official orange trail, running north-south between I-75 and the Seminole Indian Reservation, with a blue trail running parallel to the orange trail, only east, and connected at the trail’s beginning and end to form a loop. This forms a convenient loop, as you may park at the rest-stop at mile marker 63 on I-75, hike up the orange trail to the reservation (you cannot enter the Florida Trail on the Seminole reservation unless you are a member of the FTA and have written permission from the Seminole tribe), and come back on a different trail, the blue trail. Its 7.5 miles on the orange south-to north, 8.5 miles on the blue
I’ve done trail maintenance on the AT, with shovels and mauls and lifting heavy rocks, but this day really beat me up. An expected cold-front delayed until the evening, so it was manual labor in a sunny and humid day in the mid to upper eighties, weather fit only “for mad dogs and Englishmen.” I relearned why they call a certain plant the saw palmetto, as my trips to the underbrush carved my legs like a thanksgiving turkey (mmmm turkey – just a few days, my friends). In one spot we ran from bees. And in a section of the blue trail that was completely overgrown and filled with brambles, our clearing attempt was feeble – I swung a rake like a scythe, beating the brambles until the coat of bramble-stickers in my leg hairs had a second coat of brambles stuck to them.
But Panther Camp is now clear, if you wish to stop there. The trail is dry now, but the water good at Nobles Homesite – I’d bring a filter if you want water from Panther Camp.
If you would like to join the Happy Hoofers on an outing, or want more info on the Florida Trail, see the box below. And consider doing volunteer trail maintenance whenever you can. It is good to give something back to the land, and in a time of governmental funding cuts for parks, citizen stewardship and involvement is necessary.
For more info: 1-877-HIKE-FLA
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- appropriate clothing (layered, self-wicking, some water resistant)
- reliable source of fire (flint and steel, waterproof matches, butane lighter)
- purified water
- maps (know where you are)
- compass
- modest first aid kit
- emergency shelter (tarp, groundcloth, tent)
- non-perishable, high energy food (energy bars, dehydrated meals)
- spare change of clothing in waterproof container
- quality sleeping bag (last line of defence)
