Here in central Florida if you go anywhere the road will take you by or over ponds, lakes, canals, rivers, anything that holds water. \u00a0And seeing water almost always takes my mind on an inside the head journey back to the jungle where the river itself is the road. \u00a0Here the roads look pretty much the same whether it’s January or July. There in the jungle the river is one thing in January and a very different thing in July.<\/p>\n
In July on the bigger rivers you can pretty much drive your boat wherever you want, left side, right side, the middle, it really doesn’t much matter. \u00a0Of course reason dictates you’ll drive where it’ll do you the most good- such as keeping in the current going downstream and out of the main current as much as possible going upstream. \u00a0The point is in July the river is full and deep and you can go more or less where you choose.<\/p>\n
January is however a very different story. \u00a0Now you are forced to look for and follow the channel where the water is deepest. \u00a0You’ll find yourself crossing and recrossing the now very much reduced river. \u00a0You will find yourself inching your way up through a minefield of rocks only to sharply turn and go back downstream a few feet from where you you just came up only to take another 180% turn and proceed gingerly back upstream.<\/p>\n
The boat driver is always thinking about what is up ahead. \u00a0The driver has to know if there will be enough water to keep the rig moving safely whether he’s headed upriver or downriver. \u00a0Navigating downstream is most critically difficult because in a river that has any current at all you really can’t stop. \u00a0The bigger your boat the more you ‘really can’t stop’! \u00a0Whether it’s around the next bend, the next island, the next sand bar or the next pile of rocks you’d better know what’s there waiting for you. \u00a0If you should choose the wrong side of an island to go down your error won’t be apparent till till you run up on a sand bar just under the surface, that is if some rocks haven’t snagged you first. \u00a0Now you are in trouble and the bigger your boat the bigger your trouble.<\/p>\n
Somehow you’ve got to get your boat unstuck and turned around. \u00a0If your boat is big and heavily loaded it might take you several days of hard work to get the thing free of the sand bar. \u00a0You may nave ended up transporting your entire cargo little by little to the nearest shore in your dugout or runabout. \u00a0Once all the cargo is out it should be a simple matter to get the big boat back upstream into deeper water. \u00a0But alas, ‘not so fast’. \u00a0You see, the current wants to keep your boat right where it is, pushed right up on that sand bar. \u00a0Eventually you’ll win the battle with the current and walk your boat back up to deeper water where you’ll load your cargo and go down the other side of the Island. \u00a0We shouldn’t be too hard on the boat pilot because anyone who has piloted boats on the jungle \u00a0rivers has made a mistake like this. \u00a0Mostly it’s a case of \u00a0the pilot knowing which side of the island the channel is on but he miscalculated just how low the river really was.<\/p>\n
Navigating upstream is more forgiving because if the surface of the water is telling you it’s shallow ahead you can actually stop before you run aground. \u00a0Sometimes if the river is really low and there is no channel the only option you have is to transport your cargo to shore and load it back on again after your walk the boat over the shallow place. \u00a0Notable bonuses for the harried boatmen in these scenarios are (a) beastly hot sun to keep frying you (it’s dry season) \u00a0(b) plenty of gnats and no-see-ums to make sure your blood gets properly drained (c) sting rays to keep you on your toes as you wade through the water (d) and sometimes the best of all are the horse flies. \u00a0Anywhere water is splashing these guys are right there and will faithfully nail you time after time.<\/p>\n
Let’s suppose it’s early January and circumstances have mandated a supply run when a supply run should not be happening. \u00a0You’ve got two boats tied together with poles as described in earlier posts with a runabout dugout tied along side. \u00a0You’ve been slowly making your way upriver for days. \u00a0Now you’ve come to a wide stretch of river where there is no channel deep enough to get the rig through. \u00a0You are camped at the lower end (deep end) of a sand bar that’s several feet out of the water up river from where you had to unload your boats. \u00a0You’ve transported your cargo and loaded everything back on board and now it’s evening. \u00a0Now it’s time to take a real bath even though you’ve been in and out of the water all day.<\/p>\n
The mariners and their passengers are looking forward to a good night’s rest. \u00a0If there are places to hang hammocks on board most will sleep there. \u00a0If not some will sleep on the sand and if there happens to be a big flat rock (relatively speaking flat) on the river bank nearby some will sleep there. \u00a0It’s amazing how good it can feel to stretch out on a hard rock. \u00a0The advantage of sleeping on a rock over against sleeping on the sand is twofold. \u00a0(a) you don’t get full of sand, and (b) toward morning the rock is still giving off heat. I know it sounds crazy but \u00a0though you may have been roastingly hot when you bedded down, by morning it can feel chilly even though the equator is only a few degrees South. \u00a0As the night wears on the sand cools off and feels damp while the rock will feel warm and dry in the morning. \u00a0Those who aren’t too tired might try their hand at spearing fish or fishing for catfish on a hand line before turning in.<\/p>\n
Towards morning on shore, before dawn the white and brown turkeys will begin ‘humming’ or ‘singing’, whichever you prefer. \u00a0The louder the hum the closer to the riverbank the turkey will be. \u00a0A couple of the crew will sip off in the runabout and paddle in the direction of the closest sounding turkey. \u00a0If all goes well the hunters will ever so quietly tie their canoe at the river’s edge and even more quietly make their way (in the dark) to the tree the turkey is roosting in. \u00a0Oh yes, and often as not the bank right where you want to go ashore is 8 or 10 feet straight up and the hunter has to climb vines (in the dark) hoping he’s not grabbing a snake’s tail or stirring up a nest of 24 hour ants. \u00a0A flashlight or headlamp helps but too bright a light might spook your turkey above or attract a swarm of night wasps from below as you clamber up the bank. \u00a0Now the hunter must wait for enough daylight to spot his turkey in the branches above before the turkey spots the hunter on the ground below. \u00a0It’s always a little nerve wracking for the hunter because turkeys tend to be suspicious creatures and at the slightest movement will sense something is wrong and be off. \u00a0Assuming events are going the hunters way, there will be turkey and rice and maybe even fried fish for dinner today. \u00a0Everybody prefers fresh fish or turkey to canned sardines or canned corn beef.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Soon the runabout with the hunters and turkey will rendezvous with the big boats and the rig will continue making it’s way slowly up river. \u00a0The crew will be wondering what they’ll find at the devil’s pass and the shallows at humming bird island.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here in central Florida if you go anywhere the road will take you by or over ponds, lakes, canals, rivers, anything that holds water. \u00a0And seeing water almost always takes my mind on an inside the head journey back to the jungle where the river itself is the road. \u00a0Here the roads look pretty much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/danny-shaylor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}