The Indian River Lagoon Chronicles- A Narrative Paddle Adventure Through the History and Natural History of Florida's Indian River Lagoon

By John Kumiski

On December 1, 2013, five intrepid paddlers launched their vessels at JB's Fish Camp in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Their destination? Jupiter, Florida, 160 miles distant. During their nineteen day voyage of discovery they meet birds, snails, other paddlers, manatees, dolphins, scientists, restauranteurs, mangroves, seagrasses, the ghost of Henry Flagler, and much more.

Into their journey is woven the history of the people who lived along the lagoon's banks- Indians, soldiers, settlers, agriculturalists, fishermen, treasure hunters, entrepreneurs, and more.

Join their journey between the covers of this book!

People have lived in the Indian RIver Lagoon basin for thousands of years- aborigines, Spanish, English, Americans. For better or worse they have all left a mark. Written in a lively, engaging style, this book explores them all!

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Kumiski
• Release date: Jan 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370182749

John Kumiski

An army veteran, UMASS grad and former public school teacher, John has taught fishing classes at Brevard Community College and the Andy Thornall Fly Fishing for Redfish School. John is a member of the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association. He has been a president of the Indian River Guides Association, the Backcountry Flyfishing Association and the Florida Outdoor Writers Association. He has been selected as a Top Rated Guide and can be reached via www.spottedtail.com and www.johnkumiski.com.

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The Indian River Lagoon Chronicles-

A Narrative Paddle Adventure Through the History and Natural History of Florida's Indian River Lagoon

by John Kumiski

Published by Argonaut Publishing Company at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 John Kumiski

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This little ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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The Indian River Lagoon Chronicles- Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter One- The Adventure Begins

Chapter Two- Through the Merritt Island Refuge

Chapter Three- On To Titusville

Chapter Four- From Titusville to Manatee Cove

Chapter Five- To Georgiana Island

Chapter Six- To Samsons Island

Chapter Seven- To the Lagoon House

Chapter Eight- To Long Point

Chapter Nine- Sebastian and Wabasso

Chapter Ten- On To Vero Beach

Chapter Eleven- Storm Clouds Over Fort Pierce

Chapter Twelve- Rest at River Palms

Chapter Thirteen- Onwards to Stuart!

Chapter Fourteen- At the House of Moir

Chapter Fifteen- Hobe Sound

Chapter Sixteen- The Adventure Ends

Epilogue

Appendix A- Advocates for the Indian River Lagoon and Clean Water in Florida

Appendix B- Trip Lists

Appendix C- Letters to Law Enforcement

Appendix D- Ten Simple Lifestyle Changes to Help the Environment

About the Author

Bibliography

They take all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum.

Then they charge all the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em.

Don't it always seem to go

that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

They take Paradise, put up a parking lot.

-from Big Yellow Taxi, by Joni Mitchell

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We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.  

-from Cross Creek, by Marjory Kinnan Rawlings

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...everything in the Universe, being inseparably related, is therefore holy.

-from The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen

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Acknowledgements

Books typically require someone to do the heavy lifting, and a cast of thousands (ok, dozens) to support that heavy lifter. Susan as always puts up with my erratic hours, erratic behavior, erratic presence, and my erratic income stream. She supports me, she encourages me, she loves me. For so many reasons, thank you, honey.

Both of my sons helped during the trip, one by paddling, one by driving. Maxx and Alex, thank you both.

Rodney Smith and I discussed making this trip for many years before Rodney finally said, Enough talking about it. Let's do it this year! So we did. And he paddled with me every inch of the way. Thank you for being such a good friend, Rodney.

Rodney also hooked us up with the Marine Resources Council, without which the trip, as we took it, would have been impossible. Dennis Abdelhamid, Marge Bell, Dr. Leesa Souto and the Marine Resources Council helped us plan and provided logistical support during the paddle trip.

Everyone who came out and paddled with us, who fed us, who gave us lodging, who gave contributions, who made this trip possible, thank you all so much. They are, in no particular order, Darryl Benton, Nick Colantonio, Mike Conneen, the late Stephanie Conneen, Rodney and Karen Smith, Dee Kaminski, Laurie Aarich, Jay Herrington, Warren and Lori Wnek, Jim Dyce, Brian Powell, Alan LaMotte, Karen McLaughlin, James Smith, Luke Brickweg, Max Moller, Mim Duncan, Nate Demars, Maxx Kumiski, Sydney Katz, Capt. Mark Wright, Laurilee Thompson and Dixie Crossroads, Matt Conneen, the Environmental Learning Center in Wabasso, Lou and Laurie Kolbauer of Chive Restaurant in Vero Beach, Rufus and Melynda Wakeman of River Palms Cottages in Jensen Beach, the Environmental Studies Center in Jensen Beach, Marcia Foosaner, Mark Nichols, and Ed Zyak, Jim and Kim Moir, the folks at the Jupiter Pointe Marina, and the elusive Larry, whose last name none of us could remember.

Thanks go to Luke LaBree at Old Town Canoes and Kayaks and Andrew Stern at Bending Branches Paddles for supplying boats and paddles; Tammy Wilson, Mim Duncan, Sian Hunter, and Dr. Duane DeFreese for their editing work; Dr. Linda Walters and Laurilee Thompson for information and time; Ben DiBiase at the Florida Historical Society, Paul and Dale Marion at the North Brevard Historical Museum, and Dorothy Dickey at the Brevard Museum of History and Natural Science for their help with my research, and Bill Sargent for his encouragement.

Gracious people allowed me to use portions of their hard work in my work. Michael Boonstra and Diane Carr, thank you for letting me quote your work!

I'm sure I'm forgetting several someones, for which I apologize most profusely.

All these people (and more) helped make this book possible, and I am indebted to every one of them.

Introduction

This book chronicles a paddle trip that explored the length of Florida's Indian River Lagoon. The trip occurred in December of 2013. The purposes of the trip were, in no particular order, to interact with nature on an extended and personal level, to learn something about the history of the lagoon, to have fun, to have an adventure, to raise money for the Marine Resources Council, to make new friends, and to publicize the beauty of and peril facing the Lagoon. Five intrepid souls, the core paddlers, traveled 19 days by paddle craft over most of the 160 mile length of the Indian River Lagoon system in east Florida.

The core paddlers were as follows:

-Darryl Benton, a retired construction crew chief, paddling a solo kayak, 63 years old. Darryl was working with only one lung, the other having been surgically removed.

-Nick Colantonio, a retired chemical engineer, one month short of 70 years old, survivor of a quadruple bypass in 1972. Nick paddled a vintage 17 foot Grumman canoe by himself.

-Mike Conneen, 36 years old, an administrator at a school for children with special needs, paddling a solo kayak. Mike is functionally a paraplegic, having broken his back in an ATV accident.

-Rodney Smith, 56 years old, Executive Director of Anglers for Conservation and an author, my paddling partner in a canoe. Rodney has a heart condition and has an AED/defibrillator implanted under his left collarbone.

-Me, the author, professional fishing guide, writer and photographer, 61 years old. Some of my less important original equipment has been surgically removed for various reasons but I get along OK. Such gray matter as I possess still seems to function.

With the possible exception of me, it was an extraordinary group of people. I was blessed to be able to travel with them.

We were joined by more than 30 other paddlers from lengths of time as short as a few minutes to as much as seven or eight days. People who spent at least one night out camping with us include:

-Dee Kaminski

-Laurie Aarich

-Jay Herrington

-Warren Wnek

-Jim Dyce

-Brian Powell

-Alan LaMotte

-Karen McLaughlin

-James Smith

-Luke Brickweg

-Max Moller

-Mim Duncan

-Nate Demars

-Maxx Kumiski

-Sydney Katz

I would like to thank everyone who paddled with us for any length of time for joining us in this endeavor.

Let me introduce the lagoon as well. Somewhat arbitrarily, the lagoon stretches from Ponce de Leon Inlet, which separates Daytona Beach from New Smyrna Beach, all the way to Jupiter Inlet, nearly 160 miles to the south. The widest point on the lagoon is at Titusville, where it is about three miles across. The average depth of the lagoon is three feet. Six Florida counties lie along the lagoon, and about one million people live in its basin. The Congress of the United States has declared the lagoon an Estuary of National Significance.

Along the length of the lagoon we find five state parks, four national wildlife refuges and a national seashore. In the not very distant past it was the most biologically diverse body of water in North America. Due to recent events occurring in the lagoon, I'm not sure if that claim to fame is still valid.

For thousands of years the lagoon was a pristine body of water that supported unimaginable numbers of fish and shellfish, and a stable population of native Americans along its shores. Since about 1900 it has been taken for granted and abused. That history, and why change is urgently needed now, is in part what this book is about.

A lot of the information in this book I picked up over the course of decades from a variety of sources. Some were reliable, others undoubtedly less so. Many I can't even remember any more- books, magazines, seminars, workshops, conversations, classes, the internet. All those sources that I used while actually typing the book are listed in the bibliography. Sources on the internet frequently change URLs so quickly that information may be out of date before this gets printed.

The lagoon changes from day-to-day. But the foundational knowledge for this book is based on my personal observations and over 30 years of experiences along the Indian River Lagoon.

Prologue

Our paddle trip actually began eons ago, long before men walked on this dynamic planet.

After the breakup of Pangaea, corals and carbonate deposits slowly formed a thick cap of lime rock on what we now call Florida, a process that took hundreds of millions of years. Along Florida’s east coast, where the Indian River Lagoon currently lies, this limestone has mostly been covered by sand. Some natural outcroppings of limestone exist along the lagoon. Activities of modern man have exposed more.

Where did the sand come from?

Part of the naturally occurring beach sand along Florida’s east coast consists of shell and fossilized shell fragments. The majority of the sand is quartz, however, washed down to the sea by rivers from the eroding Appalachian Mountains through the ages. Longshore currents have slowly and relentlessly carried this material thousands of miles to be deposited along east coast Florida beaches.

The soil in my yard is mostly beach sand. I live about 40 miles from the beach.

Planet earth's climate changes constantly. One hundred thousand years ago the first of the four modern ice ages swept over the planet. Over the millennia the sea fell and rose as seawater was locked up in ice and then released. Sand steadily moved down the coastline during all this time. But the location of the coastline was not static. What is now my yard, dry land today, was once oceanfront property.

The last ice advance ended about 12,000 years ago.

At that time Florida was much wider than it is today. The climate was dry, savannah-like. Were men here then? Archaeologists still argue that point.

One thing that they don’t argue is that by 5,000 years ago ocean levels had risen to a point not too different from what we see today. The barrier islands that created the Indian River Lagoon had formed. The native Americans in this part of Florida were loosely confederated into the tribes we call the Timucua and the Ais (we don’t know exactly how they referred to themselves). Little is known about these tribes. They lived and thrived along the shores of the lagoon by hunting, fishing, and gathering berries and other wild foods. There were enough shellfish and enough people eating them that by the time Cristobal Colon made his fateful 1492 voyage there were shell mounds piled as high as 75 feet that were hundreds of feet long.

Colon’s voyage signaled the beginning of the end for the Timucua, Ais, and other native Florida tribes. Epidemics and slavers decimated them. For all practical purposes they were extinct before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The lagoon, now about 5000 years old, survived them.

It was patiently waiting as we made our plans to paddle the length of it. We would have an adventure, interact with nature, and publicize the beauty of and peril facing the Indian River Lagoon. We would travel by paddle, the way the Vanished People had once done…

Chapter One- The Adventure Begins

We had too much stuff. I looked at the mountain of gear and wondered how everything could fit. Everyone else had practice-packed and adjusted their loads to make sure they were beneath capacity. Now they waited for me while I tried to figure the puzzle out.

I ended up making a pile in the middle of the canoe. It looked ugly. The canoe, with a high center of gravity, would be uncomfortably unstable.

We had too much stuff!

Rodney and I wanted to get away from the dock, to be off on our adventure. The hell with it! I just tied it all down. We could sort it later, dropping off at various road crossings what we wouldn't need.

Finally- we were off! The weather was wonderful. I was paddling with one of my best friends. We were paddling to Jupiter! I liked the sound of that. It felt like we were off on a space exploration. In a way I suppose we were.

Eleven other boats had already launched. Some had waited for us, others had not. Everyone knew where we were headed, so the group being fluid at best didn't bother me. One reason I paddle is for solitude. Large groups don't offer much.

Some of the paddlers had treated our launch like it was a sacred event. It's not so far-fetched. A launch on a journey such as this is a point in time where you escape from the artificial, clock-based routine of your normal life and slide into a routine based on the natural cycles of sunrise and sunset, wind and tide.

I should have taken a moment from my frenzied attempt to get my too-large load packed for a little prayer, thanking Mother Earth for allowing such a humble creature as myself to travel on her waters. It would have been more than appropriate. I had missed a moment there. Hopefully the Lagoon would forgive my transgression.

After a short paddle a hill appeared to the east. Hills in east central Florida are rare landscape features, usually caused by human activity. We call this particular hill Turtle Mound. Although shell mining for roadbeds has reduced its height, it has dominated its location for at least a dozen centuries and is still the highest point on Florida's east coast. Once over 75 feet tall, Spanish treasure ships used the mound as a navigational aid as they brought their plunder back to Spain from the New World.

Turtle Mound consists mostly of oyster and clam shells and fish bones, although artifacts such as shell, bone and stone tools, and an abundance of pottery shards are likely to be found there. Its builders were the Timucua, natives who inhabited