Stepping Back in Time on the Ichetucknee River

By Peter Lane Taylor
Reporting From Ichetucknee Springs State Park

For as long as humans have wandered the earth, we've altered the natural world around us. More than any other species, humans have a knack for being bullish. We take what we want, consume more than we need, and live for the present with little regard for future generations or the animals and plants with whom we share the planet.

Yet, one of the great awakenings during the past couple of decades has been the realization that we can reverse environmental damage inflicted on fragile environments by humans. Ichetucknee Springs located just northwest of Gainesvilleis a great example of how we can heal damaged spring ecosystems.

Over the past few days, our quest to understand the journey of water through the Floridan aquifer, up through the springs, and to the sea has been a vicarious one, experienced through the eyes of cave divers. Today, however, we've joined Jim Stevenson, chairman of the Florida Springs Task Force, and Sam Cole, Ichetucknee Springs State Park biologist, to canoe back in time and explore the primeval magic of Florida's springs for ourselves.

“The Ichetucknee is the most pristine
spring ecosystem in the state.
It doesn't get any better than this.”
— Jim Stevenson

Our journey of discovery begins before sunrise at the Ichetucknee headspring , the largest of eight named springs which feeds the Ichetucknee river along its six and a half mile run to its confluence with the Santa Fe. With temperatures in the 30s and the summer crowds gone for the season, the conditions couldn't be better to capture this magical spring river as it might have looked ten thousand years ago. Steam rises from the surface of the head spring in spectral wisps into a bright, blue sky, while overhead, the rising sun penetrates the thick hardwood hammock, backlighting drapes of Spanish moss like ancient spider webs. Yet, what sunrise reveals is only a small part of what we've come here to document today. The story of the Ichetucknee, as Jim explains, is a story of ecosystem restoration.

"Over the past 40 years, I've explored almost every spring in the state of Florida," he tells me as we launch our canoes and begin our downstream journey, "and the Ichetucknee is the most pristine spring ecosystem there is. It doesn't get any better than this."

Within minutes of hitting the current, it's clear that Jim is not given to exaggeration. As the sun burns the fog from the water, the upper Ichetucknee ecosystem bares its primordial soul, giving Jim and Sam an ideal wilderness classroom to explain to us the remarkable communities of plants and animals native to the upper section of the river. While we are within a 45 minute drive of sprawling Gainesville, we might as well be in the middle of the Amazon .

An hour later, along the middle portion of the river, the Ichetucknee has transformed itself into a wide, aquatic savanna lush with wild rice and eel grass. What we quickly learn is that nature's marvel here is a matter of scale. Though this area was once home to such colossal megafauna as the mastodon, the saber-toothed tiger, and the American bison, the Ichetucknee's magic today is in nature's small details-tri-colored caterpillars, blood-red holly berries, duck weed, and the tiny endemic Ichetucknee Silt Snail, whose entire range is confined to a tiny cul-de-sac at the river's edge.

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