Noticing Eden: The last 50 miles with no McDonalds

Point parts from along the drive from Sopchoppy to Apalachicola.

By ROBERT SEIDLER

There is a place, just one place that’s uncharted, uncivilized, original and culturally intact, it is known as the Forgotten Coast.
The way Florida fit on a roadmap wasn’t the standard way, the western panhandle of Florida was put on the backside of the roadmap and seldom noticed…it was forever severed and forgotten from view and still is.
From Sopchoppy to Apalachicola there remains 50 miles of coastal highway without intervention of civilization or a McDonalds.
It’s a part of the Big Bend Scenic Byway – it roams uncharted territories with histories of native peoples that lived easily for hundreds of generations on coastal gatherings of foodstuff and botanical housing.
They produced the finest pottery and hand knapped points at a time when other peoples game was eaten raw and killed by stones. They had fire, oysters, clams, fishes, crabs, conchs and fruit. This was in abundance and along this drive, still is.
They left gigantic mounds of organic waste composed of the shells of the creatures they ate.
Mounds often up to 30 feet high and a mile long. Those mounds became the safe haven during storms and hurricanes and some remain today. Sadly most were used as roadway base in the early 1900s when autos replaced feet and horses as the way to travel, explore and exploit.
50 miles remain.
A diverse and cranky population inhabits the area now, descendents of a sorts of the Aboriginal peoples. Time morphs all things and all things forever change. Nature still leads us onward yet awkwardly we believe we are the ones in control.
I have been traveling this 50 miles for almost 50 years and still notice new wonders invisible at highway speeds but ever present to hikers, kayakers or cyclists who know how to Notice Eden.
Present civilizations have put stamps on this area but hurricanes and waves, wildland fires, bugs and plants still own it all. Sometimes they all work together and all the present day stamps of this time just breakup and disappear. We call it devastation, nature calls it process.
I have a partner and companion at one end of this journey and travel the 50 back and forth at all times and in all conditions.
Nature owns the conditions, I just endure them as those native peoples did for hundreds of generations. I see those native people in the wind, the waves and the sand. They haven’t left and will never, their stamps are all of those natural elements still working with perfection, not houses that flee to parts when hurricanes arrive but the sand of pottery, the fronds of cabbage palms waving wildly in hundred mile winds then resting calmly afterwards.
The decomposed shells that create the sand and dirt, they were a part of it all not a part from anything. Resilient and durable by design, made from what existed within reach that was proven by place and time again and again.
We can learn much in these 50 miles if we slow, look and listen.
We can learn enough to prosper properly again but first we must learn to Notice Eden.

Robert Seidler is a filmmaker who lives in Sopchoppy.