Speak for the Trees

I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to start in about the catastrophe in the Gulf. Because if I do, I’m gonna get wonky. I’ll start by venting, move quickly on to raging, round the corner into apoplexy, and end with the kind of grand mal fit of absolute fury that results in ill-advised statements like “Those responsible should be executed” – neverminding that I don’t even believe in the death penalty. So I’m not going mention the oil spill at all, except to note that the only bright spot in the whole awful, sad, sickening event is that Franklin County, Florida has been spared.

Now, to take heart that this particular smidge of the precious, irreplaceable Gulf Coast remains untainted might seem a bit of Pollyanna, rose-colored glass-covered mindless optimism, but Franklin County, as I learned when I spent a half-week last winter in it’s spectacular environs, is the single most biologically diverse place in the United States. Many endangered species – from various bats to the Florida black bear – are making their last stand against extinction in the county’s 545-square miles, 87 percent of which are federally or state protected. And Apalachicola Bay? It’s the most productive seafood-producing bay in the northern hemisphere. Franklin County, for so very many reasons, MATTERS.

Statistics, however, can’t describe the singular feel of Franklin County. Whether I was paddling the ebony New River through Tate’s Hell State Forest, or birding in the primordial Apalachicola National Forest, I sensed I was seeing this place as it was centuries ago, that I had encountered one of the last utterly free, absolutely pristine spots in the United States – one teeming with fragile, glorious life. There were birds everywhere, more kinds than I could count. I saw bald eagles, loons, cormorants, ducks, egrets, herons, osprey, brown pelicans and even several red-cockaded woodpeckers, a nearly extinct species.

Plant life in Franklin County was just as abundant and diverse, if a whole lot stranger. My jaw dropped at the vast 150-year old dwarf cypress swamp packed with tiny trees reaching no higher than 15 feet. Even odder were the carnivorous plants, which grow like weeds in this literal corner of Florida, resulting in the richest diversity of meat-munching flora in North America. I strolled the edges of vast pitcher plant bogs, marveling at the vegetation that traps unwary insects deep within it’s tubular depths, but I must confess the tiny Venus flytraps I stumbled upon, non-native though they were, put the biggest smile on my face. So cute…unless you’re an insect.

There are people (if not a lot) in Franklin County, and they live in absolutely adorable little towns like Apalachacola and Carrabelle. These villages – and islands such as St. George – offer lovely accomodations if your ideal method of experiencing the great outdoors ends just short of pitching a tent. If spending days wandering where the wild things literally roam makes your pulse pound with glee, if you yearn to feel less concrete and more earth under your feet – hell, if you have any affinity at all for nature, get to Franklin County, Florida. It’s one of our country’s most extraordinary natural treasures – but as this summer has made all too clear, one in mortal danger. The more people who bear witness to its magic, who speak for its feral majesty, the greater the chance of its survival.