One of my favorite parts of canoeing is the frequent appearance of serendipity. Serendipity can be briefly defined as an unexpected but happy outcome. Florida is laced with thousands of waterways, salt, fresh, and brackish. Thousands of opportunities for serendipity!

One of my favorite paddling destinations holds water which is fresh, brackish, salty and displays a delightful smorgasbord of ecosystems. It's Turner River, which crosses both Big Cypress Preserve and Everglades National Park, on the southwest corner of Florida.

During the Third Seminole War, U.S. Army troops were guided up the river by Richard B. Turner. We can only imagine how difficult it was for the soldiers to deal with alligators, mosquitoes, panthers, bears and snakes while in search of the clever and fierce Native Americans who knew how to survive so well in such adverse territory.

I've been paddling Turner River since 1993, just a few months after Dr. Tom Kazo and I founded Wildlife Research Team. By then we had a fleet of two black canoes, having added Do-It to our first canoe, Do-er. We had begun our "You Point, We Paddle" program to great success.

At that time, the Turner River Canal was still open. It was hard to locate the small dirt road leading to the put-in off US41. I've heard different versions of why this very straight canal was dug. Perhaps it was to drain what was thought of in those unenlightened times as a foul swamp, or perhaps it was to float out the cypress logs during the extensive logging of what is now Big Cypress Preserve.

In 1996, WRT supplied canoes, guides and support to ethnologist/anthropologist Joan Borel. Ms. Borel was researching the little-known Muspa Indians, a peace-loving nation that lived in the time of the Calusas, which themselves went extinct in perhaps the 1700s.

The Calusas were a surprisingly sophisticated people able to achieve engineering feats such as buildings large enough to hold 2,000 people, and digging substantial canals. They were more warlike than the Muspa, who were known for their pottery.

It was during this expedition that we noticed machinery in place to reopen the river's original course. So of course we had explore it, and wormed our way through tight mangrove tunnels and ponds clogged with water lettuce back north to US41. This is now the official canoe trail, but I wonder if our group was not the first to break through! That mangrove tunnel is the one most commonly used due to its proximity to the put-in. It's much wider than it was that day in 1996, mostly due to kayakers insisting on using double paddles and trimming the tunnel to fit, instead of using single paddles. Or you can "monkeybar" through, grabbing (carefully!) mangrove branches and roots, which is an art unto itself.

These photos are basically arranged according to how we would travel the Turner. Above, is the 'gator playground not far from US41. You will only see so many of them if you have but one or two canoes in your group. There were at least 30 on this cool March day when I took this photo, as we were but one canoe.

Right, Mandy Bellasalmo in the stern, and Gillian Swinscoe (center), had just convinced this Florida Atlantic University student he really could paddle!

They had just emerged from the first mangrove tunnel into the willow and cypress ecosystem near the freshwater head of the river. This photo was taken in 2003, when WRT hosted first FAU, and then Broward Community College students on tours.

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