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The beach, as nature intended
By HERB HILLER
Preparations are simple, formalities next to nothing. You need no guide. You drive to the edge and step into wilderness. Done right, this hike proceeds out of darkness through light to a spectacular shimmering beach. Removed from sophistications, wonder in nature returns. Years ago, I had noticed on a map that no shore road connects New Smyrna Beach and Kennedy Space Center. Here were 12 miles free of development and a beach accessible only from either end. I had come close to making the walk years ago, when a friend carried me by boat through the Mosquito Lagoon to Eldora, a fishing village that had boasted a hotel from the late 19th century. But village and hotel were long gone; only a few houses remained. During the 1960s and '70s, a Florida hero lived in one of those old houses: the artist Doris Leeper. Doris fought successfully against encroachments by RV park developers and a garbage dump. She kept the road to her place from getting paved. But Doris knew that Eldora was doomed. Nonetheless, she remained there, almost alone. She realized that if the entire seashore could be preserved somehow, remnant Eldora might be saved with it. Doris' conservation instincts matched the Space Center's need for big buffers. One result was the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The other was the Canaveral National Seashore. Doris, who also fought to preserve Spruce Creek (a portion now named the Doris Leeper Spruce Creek Preserve) and who established the Atlantic Center For the Arts on the creek shore, died in 2000 at 71. Her house is to become an environmental studies center. My walk through the National Seashore was partly to honor Doris, partly to satisfy curiosity. I asked my photographer friend Dudley Witney to join me.
We needed an entire day: This would be no fast walk. Tides had to be right or we would be forced inland. Rain or freaky cold would be misery enough; lightning might fry us. But the gods smiled. Dudley and I drove through beachfront New Smyrna in pre-dawn darkness. Temperature was in the high 30s. Dudley and I wore layers of clothing and we carried backpacks with water, lunch and gear. City lights gave way to countless stars as we entered the park shortly after 6 a.m. Even then, a half dozen cars were already there. Fishers wearing headlamps were setting up poles on the beach, hoping to catch fish hanging about below the surf. Though in darkness, we easily made out the water's edge, where the sand was firmer. The sea roared. We trotted to keep warm -- at that hour we had the energy. Soon the first rosy glow of daylight appeared, giving shape to the clouds. Rose light suffused lower clouds, then higher -- then the sea and sand. Color became the inner voice of the ocean's roar.
We climbed the slope of the beach to the edge of the dunes. To the west were waterways with myriad isles of cabbage palms and marsh, palmettos, prickly pear cactus and sea grapes. Everything appeared pink, everything fairy tale and pristine. I even thought that I should save the word "pristine," because never again would it seem appropriate to use. Waves rolled in but lacked punch. The tide ebbed. Our timing had been right; the beach began broadening.
The rose colors now fed a furnace to the southeast. The sun appeared and quickly spread everywhere: on the crest of waves, on foam slathered onto the beach. The sky became egg yellow, gold and silver. We walked steadily, talking about books, our dismay with politics, about how we had met each other (hiking a decade before in Ecuador) and wives. I liked Dudley's elongated shadow when he walked ahead. I thought of the shipwrecked Jonathan Dickinson, who probably would have seen the beach little different when he walked the coastline 450 years earlier. We did find bits of plastic litter and could see, faintly on the horizon, the spaceport's gantry cranes and massive Vehicle Assembly Building. But we also found bobcat and raccoon tracks along the dune face, and twice we witnessed the commotion of turkey vultures cleaning up dead birds. Spume blew back from the waves, and heat coming from the sun more than 90-million miles away warmed our frosty fingers. A pod of dolphins in the surf excited us. I walked more slowly, not tired but contemplative. Driftwood logs piled against the dunes, silvered by sun and wind. As the day warmed I stuffed clothes we shed into my backpack. I felt breeze on bare legs. It took awhile before I noticed the shells. I liked the broken bits, especially striped ones, suggesting bands of waves, beach, dune, marsh -- separate and diverse yet all connected. We began picking up shells and stowing them in saddlebags. We stopped to eat rice cakes and apples, which now seemed to taste unusually sweet and crisp. At low tide, the slope of the beach lessened and waves flattened. Distance markers appeared every quarter-mile on the dune, and yellow stakes marked turtle sightings -- about 4,000 a year, mostly loggerheads. Twice we passed weather-data collecting stations, their anemometers twirling. Sea birds clustered by the water's edge: pelicans, loons, turnstones, various terns. Gulls carried away small crabs. Sanderlings and sandpipers moved rapidly across the sand. Willets poked their straw bills into receding waves. We cross trails of pulverized shells reduced to sparkling sand. Dudley found a perfectly formed red crab; it turned out to be plastic. We stopped for lunch, our backs against a log on a dune, and saw the first -- and only -- ship of the day on the horizon. We knew that toward the end we would see barge ruins, then a sign requiring backcountry permits for trekkers. Finally, we would come to the ramp to the parking lot where we had left one of our cars the evening before. The tide began reclaiming beach. We trudged on, out almost nine hours. We had not been young to begin with. We were ready for the car. Then we entered a portion of the beach frequented by nude sunbathers, gay and heterosexual. First, naked men strolled toward us, seeming in no way self-conscious. Then naked men and women. Communications between us were awkward, reduced to thin "Hi's." A ranger at the ramp to the parking lot where we had left a car the evening before asked Dudley what he had photographed. "Oh, a lot of things," Dudley answered. "Had a mind to shoot more than I did, at the end." If you go Get information about the Canaveral National Seashore, about Eldora, the Turtle Mound of the Timucuan Indians, and about birding, coastal vegetation, shells and more from the Seashore office, 308 Julia St., Titusville, FL 32796. Call (321) 867-4077; the Web site is www.nps.gov/cana/. It is better to walk from the north on an outgoing tide. That gives you the widest beach for most of the day and usually will keep the wind at your back. For tidal information, go to www.harbortides.com. The lower end of the preserve closes to visitors three days before a space shuttle launch and the day of and the day after the return of a shuttle. Call Kennedy Space Center, (321) 867-4636, or log onto www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/schedule/schedule.htm for launch schedules. Arrange with the seashore office to leave a car at parking lot No. 13 at the south end of the preserve. On your way back out the Seashore gate, purchase your backcountry permit ($2 per person) and pay the entry fee for the next morning ($5 per person). The north gate opens at 6 a.m. but the entry booth will not be staffed. WHAT TO BRING: Carry a backpack with plenty of water, sunscreen, all the food you will need, a cell phone and as little else as necessary. Light hiking boots are best for the feet; otherwise, blisters may result. If you plan to hike for more than one day, carry camping gear. WHERE TO STAY: Night falls quickly (and magnificently) in winter, which is the best season to make the hike. Dudley and I spent the night before and the night after our walk in New Smyrna Beach, at the Riverview Hotel. This is a restored 1885 lodging at the eastern foot of the north bridge across the Intracoastal Waterway. The address is 103 Flagler Ave., New Smyrna Beach, FL 32169; call (386) 428-5858; the Web site is http://volusia.com/riverview/. Staff will fix you a continental breakfast at any hour. Other places to stay line Atlantic Avenue. Flagler Avenue, from the Intracoastal Waterway to the Atlantic, is a charming few blocks with mom-and-pop shops. -- Freelance writer Herb Hiller is at work on a book about Highway A1A for University Press of Florida.
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