FIELD NOTES FROM NORTH FLORIDA
One of the most important features in North Florida is something most people never even notice. In fact, if you didn’t know it was there, you could drive past it a hundred times and never give it a second thought. Just like I did.
Millions of years ago, it was Florida’s coastline. Today, geologists call it the Cody Scarp.
The funny thing is that it isn’t especially dramatic. It’s not the Grand Canyon. It’s not a mountain range. In many places, it’s little more than a subtle change in elevation. But it may be the reason North Florida became such a unique landscape.
The first clue is that you can find shark teeth in the Suwannee River. Not at the beach. Not along the coast. In a river winding through pine forests and cypress swamps, miles and miles before it reaches the Gulf.
Long before there were springs, farms, roads, or even the Suwannee River itself, the sea reached much farther inland than it does today. The Cody Scarp marks one of those ancient shorelines.
North of that ancient shoreline, water tends to stay on the surface. South of it, water disappears into the limestone beneath your feet.
That’s where things start to get interesting. North of here, the Alapaha River can disappear entirely into the ground at a place called Dead River Sink. The river simply vanishes into the limestone.
Elsewhere, that same underground world sends water back to the surface, creating the springs that have drawn me back again and again throughout my life. Peacock. Telford. Madison Blue. Troy. And dozens more.
I spent years swimming in these springs before I understood why they were here at all. In many ways, the Florida I grew up loving exists because of a coastline that no longer exists.
The more time I spend exploring this part of Florida, the more I realize that many of the things I love about it trace back to this ancient shoreline. The springs. The sinkholes. The disappearing rivers. Even the shark teeth hidden in the Suwannee.
That’s one reason I love North Florida. It doesn’t reveal itself all at once. The beaches announce themselves. The theme parks advertise themselves. But North Florida asks you to pay attention.
And if you do, you’ll discover rivers that disappear, springs that emerge from nowhere, and traces of an ocean that vanished millions of years ago.
— Dion
P.S. Have you ever found a shark tooth in a river or creek? I’d love to hear where.