My mother follows my pointing finger and spots the spider. I expect her to bolt. After all, the leggy creepy crawly looked about the size of a catcher’s mitt, suspended there in its web between two large trees on a trail in Lake Kissimmee State Park, Florida. But a whimper and a strongly worded request that we move on is all she offers. Brave of her, given that she fears anything insect-like, anything with fangs or claws, anything that stings or even buzzes. Okay, honestly, anything that remotely hints at danger.
Spanish moss at Lake Kissimmee State Park
So, for not bolting, I feel pretty darn proud of her. And if a son is proud of his mother for not fleeing a spider that snacks on small birds, what else can he do but push the envelope?
“Wait a sec, watch this,” I say as I pick up a stick and hurl it at the web above us. The stick sticks. The spider attacks. Mom bolts.
But she doesn’t get far. The moment she turns, she spots a deer about 50 metres ahead on the trail. Then a doe and a fawn step out from the swaying sea of waist-high grasses framing the trail on both sides. She stops and points. I was to follow her finger this time. The family of deer are as intent on us as we are on them. They turn their heads to assess us from various angles, their ears turned to us like a radar. They step tentatively toward us, bend for a bite of grass, raise their heads again, chewing and regarding.
Deer in Lake Kissimmee State Park
Eventually, one of the deer eases into the tall grass and vanishes. The other two follow and it’s as if they’d never been there. And so it goes, a wildlife sighting, long moments of quiet observation, a departure by one of us, another wildlife sighting. For a few hours, we walk along grassy and sandy trails from the trailhead out to Lake Kissimmee – the third largest body of fresh water in Florida – and back through the forest, my mother ever alert to danger.
What’s that in the Water, Kissimmee State Park
“Florida has pigs, you know.” Oddly enough, my mother’s greatest fear – possibly greater even than snakes – is the possibility of running into a wild pig. She reminds me that pigs – wild, tusked, dirty, vicious things – found their way into her retirement village. The pigs had to be trapped and relocated. Ever since, she’s feared them.
Grass in Lake Kissimmee State Park
As we walk some of the 13 miles of trails, we enjoy examining the grasses close up – a brochure we’d picked up at the interpretive centre tells us we’re looking at sawgrass, cutthroat grass and pickerelweed – and come across a family of three bald eagles perched in a single tree. Dozens and dozens of vultures wheel high up against the clouds. An unidentifiable screeching issues from reeds along the shore of the lake known as the headwaters of the Everglades and where we know, just know that alligators lie in wait.
Alligator sign Lake Kissimmee State Park
Leaving one trail and entering another to circle back to the trailhead and the parking lot, we plunge into the forest of pine and palm where I get the creeps about what small and dangerous things might be lurking in the brush. This is another of the dozen distinct natural ecosystems in this relatively small 5000 acre park, a square of flat scrubland and marsh pinched in the fingertips of three lakes – Kissimmee, Tiger and Rosalie. Cowboys herded cattle here during the Civil War to feed the Confederate army and traded with Cuba for supplies. Others cut timber and produced turpentine. Today, the park offers horseback riding and an 1876 replica “cow camp” where cowboys interpret the former ranch’s history around the campfire.
Trail sign Lake Kissimmee State Park
We’re just 60 kms from downtown Orlando, but it feels like ten times that and as many years in the past. None of the things we fear here are man-made. The park lives up to its nickname, “The Real Florida.” When we return to the trailhead and the interpretive centre, we follow the finger of a friendly park ranger who’s pointing up into the eaves of the building at dobs of mud. He explains that these are made by parasitic wasps that pack their mud nests with paralysed spiders, food for the baby wasps soon to hatch. Mom and I thank the nice man and walk briskly to the car.
Photo Credits
All photography by Darcy Rhyno – All Rights Reserved
Recent Darcy Rhyno Articles:
- Kindness Goes Viral
- The Children Are Dying
- Mother Canada Could Die
- A Mother of a Monument
- The Detox Myth: How Celebrity Culture Sells Us What We Don’t Need
Please Share Your Thoughts - Leave A Comment!