Treasures abound (just look around)

By TERRY TOMALIN, Times Outdoors Writer

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 5, 2000

The freighter on the horizon looked like a toy boat floating on a park pond.

"We can make it," I told my paddling companion. "That ship is miles away."

In the spring of 1990, I was new to the sport of sea kayaking. It also was my first time in the Egmont Shipping Channel.

But this novice outdoors writer, on the job for just two weeks, was ready for any adventure, no matter how stupid it appeared to be.

"Maybe we'd better wait," my friend said. "Let's just let this ship pass."

I laughed.

"Danger is my middle name," I said and started paddling as hard as I could.

They say what you don't know can't hurt you. That might be true sometimes, but not when you're talking about a ship the size of a football field.

"Oh no . . ." I said as I looked up to see the dreadnaught quickly closing in. "I'm dead."

I dug at the water with my paddle like a panicked soldier scooping out dirt for a foxhole. Minutes seemed like days as I clawed my way forward, passing in front of the ship's bow with less than 100 feet to spare.

Back at the beach, I swore I would never do anything so dumb again as long as I lived. Once again, I was wrong.

In the years that followed, my quest to become the consummate outdoorsman was hindered by countless detours down the path of foolishness.

There was the time, fly fishing in high wind, that I hooked myself in the back of the head with a bass plug. A few months later, cave diving in North Florida, I stirred up the silt floor and nearly killed myself and the photographer.

Then there was the camping trip to Ocala where a nighttime wood gathering expedition netted plenty of timber and a monthlong case of poison ivy. And who could forget the time in the Okeefenokee Swamp when I cut myself with my brand-new, razor-sharp pocketknife and had to paddle three days with my middle finger in a splint.

But after each adventure, be it to the jungles of Brazil or the rocky coasts of British Columbia, it always felt good to come home to Tampa Bay. Recently, watching the sun rise over the Sunshine Skyway bridge, I wondered why one would want to live anywhere else.

It was just another day on the grass flats: Spotted sea trout worked the shallows as pelicans dived for bait all around our boat. Less than a mile away, thousands of cars drove back and forth across the big bridge, many oblivious to the wonders around them.

If this isn't paradise, what is, I thought.

When the weather is nice and the seas are calm, bay-area fishing rivals that of any place in the world. We have the fall and spring kingfish runs, the summer tarpon season, and year-round fishing in deep water and on the flats.

When the wind blows and it is too rough to wet a line, you can break out the windsurfer or catamaran. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, grab a surfboard, boogie board, or ride the waves on your belly like the ancient Hawaiians.

When the surface world gets too crowded, you can strap on your scuba tank and visit the dozens of shipwrecks that lie within a two-hour boat ride. Or leave the fishing equipment at home and head out in search of grouper, armed with nothing more than a speargun and a pair of fins.

If water is not your thing, there are more than enough trails to get lost on, especially if your eyes are busy looking in the treetops for the rare and exotic birds that visit seasonally.

We have miles of coastline to explore on foot, and rivers, bays and swamps to visit by canoe and kayak. There are barrier islands that equal anything the Pacific has to offer and live oak forests that look as if they came out of a fairy tale.

Ten years after that close call off Egmont Key (and more than 1,000 stories later), I haven't run out of things to do.

One thing I know for sure, when it comes to the Outdoor Treasures of Tampa Bay, the more I learn, the less I know.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.