JAN-A-6
THE START UP OF THE CUMBERLAND ISLAND
EXCURSION
FROM JACKSONVILLE BY WAY OF RENTAL CAR
AND THE LUCY FERGUSON LAUNCH TO GREYFIELD
INN AND NANCY’S FANCY
AND A TOUR OF THE ISLAND FROM THE BEACH TO
PLUM ORCHARD MANSION,
TO THE WHARF RUINS POINT AND THE AFRICAN
BAPTIST CHURCH
IN SCOUTING THE SPANISH MOSS COVERED LIVE
OAKS
OF THE MAIN ROAD OF THE ISLAND
AND THE LATER ARRIVAL OF REG AND GENE
TO CATCH THE LOWER ISLAND TOUR BEFORE
SCOUTING FOR THE HUNT
January 4—5, 2003
After the ups and downs and cross ways of getting from Gainesville through the Days Inn last night in Jacksonville, I have returned the rental car and boarded the Lucy Ferguson with the whole gang minus two rendezvoused on the dock at Fernandino Beach and arrived now at Nancy’s Fancy where we are luxuriously accommodated in this “hunting camp,” complete with dishwasher and accoutrements of anything but hardship. We are stuffed now with the venison roasts carried down from my Eastern Shore deer, with all the trimmings, subsequent to my stuffing the Saturn rental car with all the produce I could purchase at Wal-Mart last night in Jacksonville, and specially packed in boxes, the way I have managed to do it the last several years in Colorado. We loaded up the car and then the ferry and this morning the Ford Ranger to transfer the whole of our supplies to Nancy’s Fancy.
After the buffet special at the hotel across from our Days Inn on Jacksonville Airport Road and our grocery shopping trip (no need for refrigeration, since last night’s temperature set atypical Florida standards by flirting with the 30* level) we returned to watch the college football championship game of Number ! ranked Miami (undefeated in 34 games) and –ugh—Ohio State, undefeated this year in 14 games, even the one in which they were totally dominated by Michigan until the last minute lucky fumbling, and eight games decided by less than a touchdown. It was a largely defensive game, with a good give and take until the last minute and a tie which went to two overtimes, but, in the end, Ohio beat it—becoming Number 1 and keeping the title in the Big Ten.
I met Craig and his two younger riders as they rode in from St Mary’s where they stayed in a hotel they arrived at around eleven last night in time to see the end of the game. I had off loaded the groceries and gear, with Craig carrying my big bag and the firearms in his truck. I then went to get gas and drop the vehicle at Enterprise car rental, and returned to get bundled up for the chilly ride over in a bright cold morning. We motored over, passing again the King’s Bay submarine base—a very large and imposing single element left from the “Strategic Triad” of the Cold War---100% of the “third—and invulnerable—leg of the thermonuclear triad—the Trident Submarine ICBM deterrence. Now is it just me? I am asking, “Each of these fully deployed Trident submarines are platforms for 20 Trident Missiles, each with 10 MIRV’s (Multiple Independently Targeted Re-Entry Vehicles)—each sub representing a hundre3d-fold Armageddons, with more firepower of mass destruction of multiple WW II’s in each missile----all targeted at a nation that no longer exists, and whose remnant pieces are now being subsidized in their new economies by the USA that is still targeting them with annihilation! What sense does this make to anyone that can be explained to me, or has this madness assumed a self-justifying imperative life (death) of its own?
As I was saying on far more understandable subjects, we landed at Greyfield dock and offloaded our supplies into the Ford Ranger pickup truck and set up our retreat to Nancy’s Fancy. I took the two newcomers, Jennifer Curran (who is here for a brief weekend before going with me next Thursday to Mindanao) and Sage Baker, a friend of David’s from Vienna Maryland who runs soybeans and corn combines on 2,000 acres of the Eastern Shore, with me as tour guide on a brief excursion to the Beach, the Plum Orchard Mansion, the African Baptist Church (the slave chapel where the late JFK Jr. got married to the bride who dies with him in his pilot error plane crash, and a bit of bird watching along the Main Road.
We saw the Plum Orchard Mansion, with a rookery of the Spanish Moss covered live oaks of several turkey buzzards, black vultures, American and snowy egrets, and one large Wood Stork (the only American native stork), and a grey heron like bird—which is a heron I do not know here, but should be in Africa from the only place I have seen such birds. I had taken a photo of a single frame where there were perched three different heron species, Great Blue, green herons, and this unknown speices along with egrets and brown pelicans wheeling around. We looked for hogs, but saw only armadillos and places where hogs had been. I did see one very large owl, most probably a great horned owl, since it was not a barred owl. We saw lots of horse, no deer nor hogs, and a few armadillos. But, we are tourists, just now, and have another day to do so as touring around, and then the hunt begins. We will look forward to seeing some more animals at that time, so we will try to scout out some places where the hogs might be.
We picked up a few sharks’ teeth and sea shells, and also spotted the bones of hogs and horses that had died along the way and admired the quasi-tropical wilderness as we shivered a bit under the 30*+ morning temperature, which warmed up to almost fifty, soon to be sixty tomorrow, with no prospect of rain during our stay. I am under a starry canopy of constellations and a few planets on this moonless night, watching the shrimp boats trawling their seines under bright floodlights just off shore and as shrimp come close to the surface on this moonless night for a feast for them, becoming a feast for people. I will enjoy this stay on Cumberland and its very familiar wilderness, whether I see game, a lot, or not. I am already well supplied with venison—with which I am stuffed well after our good dinner—and I am only hunting hogs for the control of this nuisance species and the promise to supply a couple of game dinners.
It is wonderful to be back on the hunt in Cumberland—an endangered species of its own!