I remember warblers flashing in warm sunlight. Redbud trees were in bloom. The sweet, clear water of a spring-fed river, pushing against high limestone cliffs, carried us through an awakening land.
It’s the sort of memory that comes to mind on cold February mornings when you’re scraping ice from a windshield or picking your way down a busy sidewalk in salty slush. The winter is drearily old, and you can’t wait for spring.
The desire is not merely for warmth. You can get warm in the tropics, but you can’t have spring among the coconut trees.
Spring must follow the deprivation of winter. It must involve the reappearance of life — green shoots coming up from previously frozen ground, buds bursting on bare branches, birds winging northward, animals poking their noses out of hibernation burrows and the rich smell of newly thawed earth.
There’s no better way to satisfy a yearning for spring than to float through it on a wild river — preferably in the South, where rivers from Florida to Texas offer splendid antidotes to the sight of more ice.
My favorite springtime paddling memory is from the Current River in Missouri, part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. I left snowy Wisconsin with a group of college friends in early March. As Peter Dunwiddie, now a botanist for The Nature Conservancy, remembers it, “We drove into spring.”
Snow melted away, bare ground appeared, and grass turned green. It was as if we were driving not from Wisconsin to Missouri but from February to April.
“When you’re in the hibernation mode that cold climates engender,” Dunwiddie says, “you get a craving for fresh earth underfoot. I think it’s a visceral reaction.”
On that trip, Dunwiddie coined the term “turtling,” which meant lying in the sun, either on a grassy riverbank or in a slowly drifting canoe, soaking up the warmth, struck lazy by the pleasant effects of spring fever.
We hiked on bluffs, explored caves and abandoned farmsteads, camped in wildflower-spangled meadows and woke each morning to a sunrise cacophony of migrating songbirds — and discovered the joys of a spring-fed river.
Spring-fed rivers are special. The water is unusually clear, glowing luminous blue and green from the refraction of dissolved limestone. Indeed, spring-fed rivers are usually associated with limestone, riddled with caves and underground reservoirs that can swallow up whole rivers and bring them back to the surface miles away.
Where springs overflow
On its official website, Ozark National Scenic Riverways claims “the largest number of first-magnitude springs in one place anywhere in the world.” First-magnitude springs produce 65 million gallons or more per day. Big Springs, the largest in the area, gives rise to 278 million gallons per day, a small river in its own right.
In some springs, geologists tell us, a portion of the water has never been on the surface before — not ever. It gives new meaning to the idea that springs represent renewal and revival.
Not far from the Current River in Arkansas flows another Ozark gem, the Buffalo, the first national river in America. With 135 floatable miles, it, too, is set in rugged limestone, and much of its water comes from springs.
Other spring-fed streams include the Devils River in the desert of West Texas. The 48-mile float trip winds through wooded canyons and sage-covered hills on its way to the Rio Grande at Lake Amistad. It’s a lot drier than Arkansas but still a good place for migratory birds and butterflies that follow the water on their way north. No permits are required, but access and camping are limited by extensive private land along its course.
Also in Texas, the Nueces River sends its clear waters for 45 floatable miles through a rugged, semi-arid landscape of mesquite, oak and pecan trees where paddlers might encounter armadillos, turkeys, lizards and raccoons among the spring wildflowers.
In northern Florida, spring- fed rivers are numerous, but instead of armadillos, there are alligators, manatees, otters, wood storks and pelicans. Streams like the Weeki Wachee, the Salt Springs Run and Juniper Creek provide short day runs.
Kim Fadiman, a kayaker from South Carolina, calls Florida’s popular Ichetucknee “the exemplar of a spring-fed river. It’s so clear you feel you’re flying. The fish flit around beneath you like birds in air.”
For a classic canoe trip, Fadiman recommends starting in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp, then heading down the Suwannee River Wilderness Trail through Florida to the sea. Florida has nicely organized the route with river camps and other services along the 170 miles of the trail.
“From the swamp to the gulf,” Fadiman says, “is five to eight days and about as enjoyable a river trip as I can think of.”
And it’s only one long day’s drive from scraping windshields in Philadelphia.
The Details
Paddlers can organize their own excursions on the rivers mentioned. Canoe rentals and outfitted trips also are available.
Ozark National Scenic Riverways,
Buffalo National River,
Devils River State Natural Area, Texas, tpwd.state.tx.us/devilsriver
Nueces River,
Suwannee River,
“A Canoeing and Kayaking Guide to Florida,” by Johnny Molloy (Menasha Ridge Press, 2007, $17)
