Exploring O'Leno State Park

I Hiked the Parener's Branch Trail at O'Leno State Park north of High Springs, Florida on a gloriously sunny Saturday this weekend. I started as early as I could to beat the 90+ degree heat predicted for the hottest part of the day. The 6000-acre park on the Santa Fe River is minutes from my home. I have walked the trail and explored the off-trail environs numerous times. Saturday's rewarding mid-summer ramble was 5-6 miles long.

I spent a good while investigating a large upland sandhill community that had been subjected to a controlled burn a few weeks or months ago. I made sorties into the burn from the surrounding fire breaks. Longleaf pines of various ages now stood on bare sandy ground among fresh patches of native grasses and forbs that have been released from competing hardwoods by the fire. Fine-scale topographic features within the burn area are much easier to discern now that the area has been cleared of the thickets of invading hardwoods:

• Broad sandy mounds marking the eroded sites of long-abandoned gopher tortoise burrows;
• Barely noticeable ruts of an old cart-path (parts of the park were farmed between the demise of the little town of Leno before 1900 and its acquisition and development as a park in the 1930's);
  
• An old fire break;
  
• Gopher tortoise trails. Gopher tortoises have dug many new burrows in the burn and are presently wearing new trails from burrow to burrow and to feeding areas, skirting newly fallen logs and other obstructions as they navigate their newly revitalised landscape. The density of new burrows in this area is very encouraging. Gopher burrows are known to house around 300 species of commensal organisms from the cotton mouse to the indigo snake. Many of the burrow-sharers are listed or endangered species too. This is why protecting the tortoises and their habitat is crucial.

It was a strange sensation to hear and feel sounds emanating from the ground beneath my feet as I paused a few yards away from the entrance of one new burrow to listen to a tortoise digging away underground.

O'Leno State Park is home to the River Sink, where the Santa Fe River slowly swirls around in a large circular sinkhole as it drains underground. Trails in the park take one past several more-or-less linear water-filled depressions variously called lakes, sinks, and branches (Parener's Branch is one example). These small fresh water bodies are windows into the Old Bellamy Cave System (50,000 feet of divable tunnels as of 2007) through which the Santa Fe River flows underground for roughly 3 miles through a maze of conduits 80-100 feet below ground level before surfacing as a first-magnitide spring at River Rise Preserve State Park to the south of O'Leno. The natural land bridge between the sink and and rise of the Santa Fe River has been traveled by native Americans since time out of mind, and historically, by the Spanish conquistadores/explorers/missionaries, and European-American settlers and their descendants. The evolving story of the the discovery and underground exploration of this world-class fresh water cave system beneath this land bridge is simply amazing. But I was there to walk and to observe the above-ground plants and wildlife. I leave the dangerous cave diving to the true adventurers.

Each of the sinks, branches, ponds, "lakes" and other hidden and mysterious linear water bodies along Oleno's trails has its own character:

• Jim's Sink - is picturesque, and reminds one of a Japanese painting. Just now, in late summer, the floating fern Salvinia obscures nearly half of its surface. Yet the basin is active with the sounds of fish sipping insects off the surface and occasionally jumping from the black tannin-stained water with a loud splash. There is an abundance of false indigo shrubs near the bench/overlook.
• New Sink - further along the trail, is completely different. Salvinia and marsh pennywort have choked the surface of the water and there is little or no false indigo to be seen. Rather, vegetation of the surrounding woods dominates. A tiny island populated by a few woodland trees sits near the overlook. It is evident that the ground around this island recently gave way and left the island standing above the sunken water-filled ground 10-15 feet below. That evidence, and the paucity of water-loving vegetation give credence to the name of the sink. Wetland plants that one would expect to see there simply have not had sufficient time to build up appreciable populations. Here one is reminded that the river flows through a lacework of underground caves and channels, and that the ground beneath one's feet is perhaps not as solid as it seems.
  
• A nameless sink - A few hundred yards North and West of Jim's and New sinks I noticed the ground falling away into another depression out of sight from the trail. I bushwhacked through the woods and encountered another small water-filled sink. This nameless feature has its own complement of vegetation different from that of the other sinks. Here a ring of tall buttonbush stands at water's edge. Moving upslope within the circular depression are fine examples of river birch, Florida maple, and parsley haw. There are lovely little haw thickets, and stands of sparkleberry, a small arborescent blueberry species in the piney woods along the sink edge.

It was pleasing to make these small discoveries and to expand my knowledge of the park. Besides these highlights, I made a few other small discoveries notable at least to me.

• At the first confluence of the "green" Parener's Branch trail and the short "orange" bicycle trail connector (trail segments are marked by painted blazes on trees or by inconspicuous 4X4 trail markers) I found several native hibiscus plants in bloom. This particular rosemallow species has ivory-yellow petals with a blood-red throat. I'm not yet sure of the species, but the individuals are standing among fans of saw-palmetto and shiny blueberry in a scrubby area where sand live oaks were the predominant tree.
• On a stretch of trail north of the sinks I spotted a very large Bluff Oak standing in a forest of large-diameter live oaks, pignut and mockernut hickories, and hop-hornbeams about 250 feet off the trail. This bluff oak was about 40" in diameter and its maximum crown spread about 80 feet. I believe that to date this specimen is the largest bluff oak individual that I have found in this part of Florida.

Walking takes on many forms. You can keep your eyes on the path and rack up miles and miles in a day. Sometimes I prefer to saunter, to look up into the treetops, to meander repeatedly on and off the path, and to stop often to contemplate everything from a flower or a giant tree to the subtle evidences of human activity that ceased a century or more before. Walking has its rewards, and they are not always the rewards you set out to achieve.


Florida, hiking, walking, state parks, trail, hiking trails, O'Leno, Columbia County, Alachua County, oak, wild blueberries