You are going to get wet.
That’s the first rule of the Florida Trail, and something to take to heart, even in a normal year.
Not only will you be hiking in water almost every day, but for Central and South Florida, this year’s El Niño is shaping up to be one of the strongest in recent memory, bringing rain and gray skies for the foreseeable winter season.
The rain and deep water across the trail slows everyone down. Something I have a hard time accepting in a hike, especially when the zipper on my Ultimate Direction 40 backpack catches water that runs off my umbrella, soaking the gear inside my pack.
Despite the beautiful scenery and wild oranges along the trail, it’s hard for me to miss arbitrary mileage goals. Goals I made up in my head about how fast I should be going. Goals that had me making up miles by cutting across Kissimmee Prairie, through alligator infested water on the McGuire Prairie Trail.
If you don’t see them it’s easy to pretend that there aren’t alligators in the water with you. But when they watch you approach as they lay just to the side of the trail, and slip into the same water that you are walking through, it adds a whole other level of tension.
Acey handed me one of his trekking poles and we pushed through the murky, waist deep water, staying close in the hope that we would appear as a large four-legged animal to anything below the water. We trudged the length of a football field through the deeper water before it dropped below our knees.
Then the rain started again.
By the end we’d hiked 69 miles, from Okeechobee to River Ranch, in three days. Hitting my arbitrary goal, but using up any energy that would have been better spent trying to stay positive. Because this El Niño was going to be affecting the rest of the hike.
#floridatrail #ftthruhike