Living at Swamp's Edge with Kayak Kelly

Very little of Dixon County was an actual swamp.  Just a small corner of it at Dixon's southeast edge.  And at the edge of that is the tin roofed cabin of Kayak Kelly.

Kayak Kelly Mavis, a broad shouldered, white bearded man in his mid-sixties, lived there by himself, at the edge of the swamp that he had grown to love.  He was a retired biology teacher, having taught 33 years at Dixon High School (actually the first ten years at Crowley High School, before the County consolidation).  He now gave occasional guided tours of the swamplands, and toured the swamp waterways in his small kayak.

Kayak Kelly grew up in Michigan, near Owosso, and came south after college, marrying a Georgia girl he had met at Michigan State.  She was a beautiful, active woman, and they shared a love of the outdoors.  When she had died suddenly of meningitis ten years ago, Kelly felt totally adrift.  He filled the void by increasing his already large passion for nature,

He took many beautiful pictures of the swamp, some of which were displayed at the Okefenokee Heritage Center, and even a handful had been sold.  He read voraciously, particularly the classics and nature books.  The walls of his cabin were decorated with his photography and maps he had made of the swamp.

This morning he was planning to go out with a mission in mind.  For the last few weeks, he was looking for something special, something unique.  Something that might help stop the Compton Park project that threatened to eat up what little swamp there was in Dixon County.

He had seen it once, and catalogued it in his notebooks.  But something recorded in his books would not be enough to create an injunction against the developers.  No, he needed to find it again.  A dahoon holly, but one like he had never seen before.  It was a large evergreen shrub, almost more treelike.  It was bearing stone fruit, or drupes, when he saw it two falls ago.  And the fruit was blue.  Not pale blue, or dark blue, or navy blue, but a bright royal blue, a color he had not seen in the swamp before.  As if some Technicolor wizard was playing games with the film, trying to create an other worldly feel.

He needed to find it again and get a sample he could present.  He wanted to have the contents of it analyzed, to see what unique properties it may have, that might explain its color or if it possessed any other interesting attributes.

So he took off, once again into the swamp that started just behind his cabin, armed with a camera and a sample bag, ready to save the swamp.  Forrest Compton and his bank, Andy Caldwell and his good 'n' greedy  State Farm hands, Houston Graves and his calculating ways, even Reggie Crowley and his all consuming and polluting paper mill; ol' Kayak Kelly would find a way to stop them all.

On he travelled past the cypress trees, winding his way on the waterways in his small kayak, past floating peat mats and tree islands.  He saw black gum and bay trees, insects still buzzing and abundant even in November.  He saw a fox, a few deer, and the rustle of what may have been a bear.  He saw a few regular dahoon hollies, with orange-red drupes hanging from them.

He heard a loud noise in the distance, and a sound that was not animal, not even a bear, nor a falling tree.  It was a mechanical sound, like a bulldozer or other piece of equipment. Was he too late?  Had they already started the excavation?

In his distraction, he had turned down a waterway that he had traveled little, because to the best of his memory it was a dead end.  And this time it was as well but.....

There it was!  A dahoon holly, in all its wonder, the size of a small tree, bearing royal blue stone fruit!  This time he would get samples, and take some down to Gainesville to have his buddy. Dave Rowell at the University of Florida, analyze them.  He could stop the Compton Park developers in their tracks!

But as ecstatic as he was over his find, anther sight made his jaw drop.  Next to a cypress near the dahoon holly, were an alligator and a possum.  Their faces were only inches from each other, and they for all the world like they were conversing.  Granted, it was November, not a time period gators normally fed.    But that didn't mean those two creatures would hang out with each other. There was no fear or tension in either of them.  They looked for the entire world like best buds.

Kayak Kelly had been taking pictures of the dahoon holly, and now nervously turned his camera towards the possum and gator.  The normally calm Kelly was shaking so that he lost grip of his camera and watched it plunge into the brackish, acidic waters.

The possum and gator turned at the sound of the splash and Kelly's blurted expletive.  They stared at him for a few seconds, and then returned to their own conversation.

That's right.  That's what Kayak Kelly saw.  The two creatures returned to their own conversation.

Nothing left to do now but to pick a couple of the blue drupes, and save the swamp.  Save it for that possum and his gator buddy, and countless other creatures.