DAY 26: At the Ochlockonee and Sopchoppy Confluence

PANACEA, FLORIDA | SUNDAY, APRIL 4, 2010 – Here where the Ochlockonee and Sopchoppy rivers meet, and the Gulf of Mexico breathes up into their delta, mixing the fresh with the saltwaters, we pitched camp just after sunset. Men were fishing on a pier. Cars were passing, bleeding taillights into the night, over a long, low humped bridge.

Much earlier, in the morning, around noon in DeLand, we had said our last good-byes. I’d gone over to the old cottage around 9 am, after coffee with Adrienne and Dave. A guy Andrew, tall, thin, a dreamer, graphic designer, lives in the cottage now, above the garage. I got old towels to wrap two planes in for the voyage, and sheet plastic for my old violin. I stood there in the garage, the morning light brightest at the open bay door, fading along the walls. The garage was once the workshop. So I stood there a little while, holding whatever it is we hold when we pause before leaving spaces we know.

Andrew was moving across the floorboards above. A person alone in their house moves much less than you would think. In the morning anyway. Just a few steps. Then nothing. The pipes rush with a surge of water. Nothing for awhile. Maybe he is looking out the windows, through the lime green bamboo. Maybe the person is waiting for the right moment to begin the glass of water.

I texted him. I heard his phone ring. I was looking for the rent. Last day at $600, I told him. He could post-date it if that helped, I said.

In a few minutes we were drinking coffee, check in hand, good by next Friday. One ceiling fan to be switched out. Running. We both run. We talked about that. He knew of an island, he said, with wild horses, a ferry to it. He thought it was Apalachicola way, where we were headed.

Then goodby to Dave, old friend who now keeps things going at the old house, has all the keys, has made the old workshop his staging area for the thousands of books he finds, the old doors, the salvaged wood floors, cypress, maple, beautiful, odd lost valuable things. We took photos in front of the house where he stays these days, where he is caretaking. Adrienne took them. Of him and me, flexing our elbows.

A few doors down, Magda and Wyatt were getting ready for Easter dinner, a ham with family, with her husband Chip’s family I think, up in Pierson where all the ferneries are. Pierson, where the families have come from central Mexico since the 1970s, growing the delicate ferns under shade cloth to wrap bouquets of roses around the world.

“Chip’s across the street,” Magda said. The parrot was out on the front porch, squalling away crazily. “You’ll find him. He’s out in the back. Bye!” Big smile, up the stairs to get her daughter going.

Adrienne and I snuck up on Chip. We hid behind the giant smoker Succubus parked in the grass as Chip rode his mower away from us. You could plant 32 orange trees easy in this back yard, four wide and eight deep, still with room for a garage in back and a sand path to it wide enough for cars. It’s all grass, hot, wide open, uninhabited. The neighbor who owns the place works for the State Department, isn’t around much any more. So Chip looks out for it.

He’d seen us coming somehow. Our ambush was foretold. We talked. He invited us for dinner. He put us in team shirts for his sideline business, Fre-Wil BBQ. Succubus, the smoker, is his and a friend John’s creation, a giant black propane tank they’ve converted into a goldmine, brisket, ribs, half-chickens. Delicious.

We headed out of town, Yellow Truck freighted, but hardly showing it. The leaf springs seemed to like the load. The ride was better over bumps, more cushioned, the springs having to do a bit more work absorbing, to recover their stiffness. So we were off. North and west along Rt 44, then 42 and up 27, so on, two-lane back roads cut through forest, then through fields of cattle, past long low chicken houses, through swamp with cypress trees, hot, the windows down, the shirts Chip had given us a blessing, being button-down lightweight workshirts that let in the breeze.

“Remember Bricker’s Automotive,” he’d said. “When you go through Missouri, look for him.” Not that we are headed that way at all, but Bricker had installed AC in Chip’s Gran Marquis when he and Magda, Magda pregnant with Wyatt, had been driving east to Florida, to land in their first house here, the old Orange City house, that Magda wrote plaintive songs about once they’d moved, that while they lived there, they laughed about and scorned ironically, called the Chateau de Po-Ver-Tay.

No A/C in Yellow Truck though. Won’t be. He’s a West Coast truck, on his way home.

We ate lunch by the river. It just worked out that way, one last time there, Ed Stone Park, on the way out of town. We split another Subway $5 foot long tuna, sitting at a park picnic table, one of about nine tables under a shade structure that we liked, we liked the laminated beams, sitting alongside the St. John’s River, at Whitehead Bridge, old metal drawbridge. People eating Easter hot dogs, grilling right there under the structure. People in the fold-out chairs in the sun at the river bank fishing. The boats parading by slow, manatee zone.

Adrienne made a joke, said something I can’t remember now, but the idea was that we could stay, live again in the cottage. That we should just stay. Such a good spot like that, sparkly water, making her want to stay.

The day went on, the road went on, until the sun cooled. We got no dice again on biodiesel this time in Perry, Florida. This time they were advertising it on a billboard even, but when we got there they were out, and they only were out of B5 anyway, not the B20 advertised online. By now we were hardly phased. We got seven gallons of regular diesel, giving us enough to get to Pensacola, probably the next mirage of the famous biodiesel blends so hard to find.

The sun started to set. I’d siliconed the three leaks in the camper shell. We’d found them the other day spraying with a garden hose, marked them with a red marker. Things were good. Everything fit when we packed. Now, with day ending, we just needed a place to stay. We didn’t really have a firm plan. We’d talked about camping but never gone grocery shopping. Maybe we’d start with a little motel. Maybe we’d be ready for camping the next day.

We ended up on an island, Live Oak Island. Every house was on stilts, with enough room for a small tsunami to flow through. Beautiful, marshland looking south to the Gulf of Mexico. Deserted except for three awkward bicyclists tottering down the middle of the road, slow getting out of the way.

We headed back up to the main road. Thought we’d go to State Park. But one of the locals we’d talked to was a bit off. We didn’t like his way. So we changed route. We came back to the coastal road. We kept going west, looking for a quaint motel now. But then the Holiday Campground, which we’d seen billboards a few times for, finally was there, in Panacea, just before a long curved concrete bridge, spanning the confluence of the Ochlockonee and Sopchoppy rivers.

I made an executive decision. We were camping. It was riverfront. So what if it was all RVs. The far corner site was free, wooded with pine trees, the river waters lapping, almost lake-like, a bay, call it, about 20 feet away. The sun was gone. It was just suffuse light left, orange fogged in below deep blue. We snapped a bit as we put up the tent. But it’s a beauty and it was our first night in it. Both of us can stand up in it.

The stars came out. It was the most stars I’ve seen in years. All stirred up, deep and whirly. Adrienne got out the tripod. We sat there. We took long exposures. We ate beef jerky with beer. The tent glowed with a lantern. We had the air mattress pumped up inside. We were super comfortable. The loons called twice, unseen on the river. It was Easter. Panacea, Florida had come through, better than aspirin.