Note: The following post will be a bit repetitive for my loyal bloggies. It is being posted on the National Geographic Blog-a-Thon Geography Awareness site on Thursday, November 19th…
See the Sunny Blues video here.
The Chattahoochee-Apalachicola River flows over 500 miles through three states. The Chattahoochee becomes the Apalachicola River in Florida and weaves its blackwater way through cypress, long-leaf pine, sawgrass, oak, and tupelo forests and through the filters of Apalachicola Bay oysters.
I’m eating those oysters today since I have left Morpheus and the river at Lake Seminole and have joined my brother at the Apalachicola Seafood Festival, the oldest seafood fest in Florida. The ‘Hooch and Apalachicola River end here and they have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Apalachicola Bay, one of the most productive marine sanctuaries in the country.
Apalach’s oysters thrive on the Hooch’s influx of freshwater, but the relationship sours with the foul water brought down from discharge, sewer overflows, and industrial and individual-citizen run-off along its course: through Atlanta, Columbus, Eufaula, and other towns. Recent flooding around Atlanta sent untreated wastewater down the Hooch at an alarming rate.
But the party must go on. This is Florida, it’s 70 degrees and sunny, the bugs are gone, the beer is cold, and the deep friers are bubbling with fresh seafood. On Friday afternoon Miss Florida Seafood Queen had her silver heels on and the breeze filled King Retsyo’s red cape like a sail on the bow of Buddy Ward and Sons’ shrimping boat. There was a fishing fleet waiting to be blessed and a crowd lined Apalach’s downtown waterfront waving into the sun.
Friday night we stumbled upon a blues shindig in the courtyard of a store that sells natural sponges, once a thriving industry in the bay. Mary belts out the tunes and stomps around the dance floor. The mic passes through the crowd and I sing for the first time in front of a live audience: “Rock me baby like I ain’t got no bones.”
Two blocks behind me, through the darkness, the Apalachicola River slides under the waning moon and rusty shrimping boats and through marsh grasses on its grand entrance to the bay. The same water I floated upon, swam in, pulled on with my paddle, and slept beside 500 miles and six weeks ago in the foothills of north Georgia’s Apalachian mountains moves there, a constant downward motion that connects everything in its path, for better or worse, in sickness and in health.
