Traces of the Ancients in the Lower Suwannee Region Part I. Cat Island

The desire to learn more about the ancient people who inhabited Florida came not from direct observations in the field. Instead, my curiosity was fed by the fascinating tales woven by University of Florida archaeologist Ken Sassaman. In a series of presentations to the Cedar Key community describing his investigations, he peeled back more and more of the mysteries surrounding the pre-Columbian mound builders of the southeastern coast, focusing on close to home features.

 The ongoing discovery of the pre-history of Shell Mound and the significance of the mound as an ecological feature is a late chapter in the continuing education of a naturalist. Shell Mound, on the Gulf of Mexico about four miles north of Cedar Key, is an ancient Native American structure that pre-dates the European settlement of the western hemisphere. In addition to its undoubted interest to students of archaeology, the mound has unique features that qualify it as a subject worthy of the attention of natural historians.

 

Cat Island, Florida, December 6, 2011

 The paddle over to Cat Island from the Town of Suwannee wasn’t too bad. We had a following wind and moderate, perhaps two-foot, waves. I wasn’t an experienced kayaker and was uneasy with waves. We were paddling in the Gulf of Mexico where very large waves are possible. Although the waves weren’t particularly frightening, I knew a bit more wind could whip up bigger ones and take me well out of my narrow comfort zone. 

 I had recently begun kayaking to help a partner develop a series of paddling guides to highlight kayaking opportunities in the Lower Suwannee and Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuges. We hoped paddlers would better appreciate the natural history of the refuges and see their paddling trails as more than watery exercise routes.

 

Approaching Cat Island from the south.

Our only near-disaster happened just as we reached Cat Island. I was the first ashore, and my kayak glided in to the beach, stopping abruptly with a thud on the hard-packed sand. I’ll wait until the others arrive, I thought, but my landing was instantly followed by the feeling of water gushing over the back of the boat and flooding the cockpit. The boat stopped, but the following waves did not, the boat was overtopped, and I was sitting in water, mostly soaked from the waist down. The others had a good laugh when I told them what happened.

 Now that we had arrived, I wondered what kind of place this was. The narrow beach on which we landed abuts an eroded bank a bit taller than me. A short but steep scramble took me to where I could look around. I struggled to take in the panorama before me. I looked right and left, then right and left again. The island was thin and crescent shaped. I was standing near the top middle of the crescent, and the high ground gradually diminished, and then disappeared as it reached out toward the far arms of the crescent. This narrow upland surrounded an expanse of marsh.

 

Cat Island beach near the spot where we landed. Note the edge of what was a narrow band of shells and sand to the right and the eroded area toward the left. This point is near the center of the crescent-shaped island and its highest point.

This is a manmade structure, I thought, even before I had a chance to mobilize and sift through all the evidence that led me to this conclusion. I knew from lectures that prehistoric people in this region made shell mounds in certain patterns, and common patterns were semicircles or crescents. Scrambling down I noted the thick layers of shells and sand that made up the ridge of land on which I just stood. It was clear that Cat Island is largely made up of shells, and they are almost certainly shells left by ancient peoples. I also noted that the island was eroding severely. Over-washed, undermined, and uprooted palm trees and other vegetation littered the beach.

 

 

Google Earth image of Cat Island. We landed near the highest point of the crescent-shaped island not far from the southwest facing beach, toward the lower left of the image.

This was one of those islands that are washing away as the result of sea level rise and the series of major storms that visit periodically. Not too many more storms would be needed to make Cat Island disappear completely and become a patch of marsh slowly giving way to open water as sea level rises.

 Walking along the beach to the south and east as the ridge of land narrows, I found another surprise. A large sign faced outward and was obviously intended to be read by passing boaters. It said the island was for sale and included a phone number to contact. Until seeing that sign, I believed that Cat Island was part of the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge like other islands in the vicinity.  Discovering that this manmade island of likely archaeological significance was private land added to the mystery about the place.

 Surely the refuge must want to obtain such a unique and noteworthy place, particularly because it was for sale and it was difficult to imagine what plans a buyer might have for it. I thought again and wondered what the chances were of finding a buyer when it was so obvious that the island was washing away. But maybe it didn’t matter; everything here would soon be inundated by waters of the Gulf.

 After a quick lunch it was time to leave. The wind had died down, and the paddle back to Suwannee Town was easy and uneventful. It was warm for a December afternoon, and I was only troubled by the fact that my clothing and the padded seat of the kayak were still soaked.

 After we returned, I did some research about Cat Island and discovered that I had heard about the island previously in a presentation by University of Florida archeologists. Conscious that many ancient Native American sites in the region are threatened with inundation by rising seas, the archaeologists were in a race against time, surveying as many sites as possible to learn their secrets before the evidence is lost. Cat Island was surveyed early because of its vulnerability seems so great. Excavations revealed the history of occupation of the site. The role of the crescent configuration of the structure, however, remained a matter of speculation and could be an artifact of shifting sands in the millennium or more since the area was inhabited.

 Years later I learned that sometime after our visit human remains were discovered at the site, doubtless exposed by the erosive forces relentlessly destroying the island and redistributing its parts.

 

More Ferments: Making Sourdough Bread

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about some changes in people’s behavior worldwide, and it turned out that at least in this part of the world, other people were changing in ways that seemed eerily familiar to us. One example is my decision in mid-summer to try making sourdough bread. Unknowingly I was joining with hordes of other people who have taken up baking during this long period of social distancing. For a while at least, yeast and certain kinds of flour were unavailable in our supermarket. I had become part of a trend, realizing only later that I was part of a near stampede.

Well over a year ago our daughter Meg’s husband Steve began making sourdough, and we were much impressed with the breads he made, although neither Peg nor I harbored any notions of trying it ourselves. Then about the time that I began trying to make sourdough, our other daughter Pam began also. A good neighbor in Virginia gave her some of her sourdough starter, and so she began. Maybe the news of Pam’s early efforts influenced me or perhaps, each of us may have independently stumbled on this new hobby. 

In retrospect, my trying out bread making was a natural; I had gotten interested in fermentation when we began making cheese more than a decade ago while gathering background for The Summer of a Thousand Cheeses. We haven’t tried cheesemaking in a while, but I have regularly made other fermented foods, including sauerkraut, kimchi, and curtido. So why not round out the Random Ferments blog with yet another kind of fermented food product?

I hate being whiny, but the majority of my first five or six tries flopped, producing far less than expected results. The first four resulted in flat, tough hockey pucks, and a fifth was better, but still only slightly resembled a loaf of bread. The first few were made with special bread flour recommended by Steve ($40 for 10 pounds), that despite the pedigree of this ingredient, had no magic. Following other instructions, later attempts used regular all-purpose flour. One recipe even called for use of a packet of store-bought yeast to supplement whatever might be provided by the sourdough starter. It obviously didn’t help, as that attempt was another failure. I should note that we ate these early sourdough products, which were tasty but barely recognizable as loves of bread. The fifth or sixth (sorry, but I’ve lost count), produced under daughter Pam’s tutelage and with some of her starter resulted in an acceptable product which, however differed seriously form the loaf she produced, which was taller, lighter, and definitely more bread-like than mine. A sixth, attempting to follow her successful formulas, produced yet another shrunken, hard, but nevertheless tasty product that was more hardtack than bread.

Success at last! The seventh worked well, and I wish I knew why. My first guess was that, following a suggestion in the first of the several sets of recipes I used filtered water. Could it be that our charcoal filtered water removed some essential substance needed for healthy growth of the yeast? That seems unlikely, and the word from others is that occasional unexplained failures in sourdough breadmaking are to be expected. Nevertheless, six disappointing results in a row seems unusual, especially for me who enjoys experimenting with fermentation, has good equipment, and spent a good many years in chemistry labs.

Two recent successful attempts produced decent loaves of bread, but the dough was too sticky and difficult to handle, some of it was inevitably left behind sticking to cookware, and the loaves were misshaped. In mid-November, following the earlier successful attempts I decided to try again using bread flour. That solved at least partially the problem of too fluid and sticky dough, and the last two loaves have exceeded my modest expectations.

 A recent relatively successful loaf of sourdough, attractive to dogs and people alike.

I now think I know why the earlier attempts failed. I believe I did not adequately feed my sourdough starter. Most times of the year our house is warmer than the 68° F. recommended in the recipes I’ve been using. It was 68° this morning when the outdoor temperature had fallen to 47°, but for most of the warmer season our thermostat is set for 79°. That 11° difference could have effectively doubled the rate of metabolism and reproduction of the yeast (anyone with appropriate knowledge could plug the numbers into a formula and calculate the change precisely). So during the warmer months I have likely fed my starter with fresh flour too infrequently, with twice daily feedings perhaps necessary to maintain its activity. So, when it was time to make the dough, the yeast in the starter was mostly depleted and unable to multiply fast enough and metabolize fast enough to produce a rise. Another possibility is that I may have let the first rise of the dough go on too long, again depleting the supply of fresh flour available to produce a healthy crop of yeast.

It has been said that the surest path to true learning is through a series of failures. If that saying is true, I may finally have mastered making sourdough bread. And if my success holds up, it may be time to move on to new challenges, for example trying a sourdough pizza crust.

 

 

 

Carnivorous Plants of the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge

The Lower Suwannee Refuge may have as many as 17 species of carnivorous plants belonging to five major groups, and you can easily observe representatives of several of these.  Carnivorous plants are usually found in moist habitats with waterlogged soils, where nutrients are rare or difficult to absorb. They supplement the nutrients in short supply by capturing insects or small invertebrates and digesting their bodies to obtain the needed materials.

The pink sundew (Drosera capillaris) captures insects in the sticky mucilage oozing from its modified leaves. Leaves fold around trapped insects, secrete digestive juices, and absorb the released nutrients. This is one of a cluster of sundews along the refuge’s Tram Ridge Trail near where it approaches a mesic hammock. Another sundew, the dwarf sundew (Drosera brevifolia) may also occur on the refuge.

The blueflower butterwort (Pinguicula caerulea) and yellow butterwort (P. lutea) have conspicuous flowers. Less conspicuous are their leaves which, somewhat like those of sundews trap insects by being sticky. These specimens, along the Tram Ridge Trail, share habitats with the sundews, occupying somewhat drier sites. A third species, the small butterwort (P. pumila) may also occur on the refuge.

Tarflower (Bejaria racemosa) a common shrub on the refuge is conspicuous along the Tram Ridge Trail. Not regarded as a carnivorous plant by some botanists, its sticky flower petals (hence the name) ensnare and kill insects which fall to the ground adding their nutrients to the soil, which are subsequently taken up by the plant’s roots. It is a member of the heath family (Ericaceae) a group that specializes in nutrient poor soils and have symbiotic fungi helping them to obtain essential minerals.

 

The hooded pictherplant (Sarracenia minor) has been recorded from both Levy and Dixie Counties, and may occur on the refuge. Pitcherplants trap insects in their leaves, which are modified into long vertical funnels with tops that resemble flowers. Like other carnivorous plants they occur in normally waterlogged sites. This image is from the University of Central Florida.

These floating bladderworts (Utricularia inflata) can be seen from the observation deck of the small freshwater pond just off the refuge Nature Drive. The filamentous roots contain tiny capsules (bladders) which trap small invertebrates. Hair triggers on the bladders discharge when activated by prey swimming nearby, producing a suction that draws prey inside where they are digested. The bladders are said to be among the most intricate structures in the entire plant world. Up to nine other species of bladderworts may be found in waterlogged soils of the refuge.