Our 41st Anniversary Trip—Part Two

Heard the one about the Florida sinkhole?

These two guys were out hunting in central Florida’s sinkhole country. In the woods near the edge of a field they came across a deep hole in the ground.

It was so deep they could not see the bottom, so they threw in a rock and listened to hear it hit… Not a sound.

They tried a bigger rock.

Over the edge. It disappeared in the darkness without a sound.

They wanted to try something bigger, so they lugged over an old railroad tie from the edge of the field and toppled it into the deep hole. Down it went. They still could not hear it hit bottom.

But, as they stood on the edge looking down, they heard a crashing noise in the woods behind them. This goat came dashing through the bushes. Lickety-split, it ran to the edge of the deep hole and leaped.

Down, down, down it sailed and disappeared out of sight.

This behavior amazed the hunters. They’d never seen an animal act like that before. They picked up their rifles and headed back to where their pickup was parked.

As they crossed the field they met the farmer who said, “You fellows seen my goat back there in the woods? I know he cain’t have got very far ‘cause I had him just over yonder tethered on a long chain hooked to a railroad tie”.

During our 41^st anniversary vacation, Ginny and I explored a sinkhole.

While other people hunted deer, wild turkey, and bear, Ginny and I hunted Indian arrowheads and fossils around the Lafayette Blue Spring.

Sinkholes make a good place to seek such treasures. Spring waters flowing through subterranean caverns for years and years, wear away the living rock forming larger and larger underground rooms. Eventually the roof wears too thin to support the weight of the ground above and the whole thing falls in creating a sinkhole.

Hardly a year goes by without news reports of houses or even sections of interstate highway being swallowed by a sinkhole.

The sides of the sinkholes abound in fossils. The exposed rock sometimes reveals giant shark teeth over six inches long. The saber-toothed tiger, extinct bison, the ground sloth, and even mastodons once roamed Florida and the paleoIndians hunted such creatures.

Here’s a photo of me half-way down a sinkhole near the springs:

I found a few fossil bone splinters and shells. Ginny found a bit of Indian potsherd; but she was more interested in plants we found in a gully:

She took photos of this Resurrection Fern growing on an oak in the sinkhole:

When we reached the bottom of the sinkhole, we found deer tracks and an otter’s slide. Certified cave divers explore the depths of Florida sinkholes and springs; they say the underground, underwater caverns extend for miles under the earth.

One day, our radio told about the old farmer who asked his little boy if he wanted to grow up strong and healthy and live for a long time.

The old man told the boy the way to live long, is for everyday at breakfast, to open a shotgun shell and pour the gunpowder on your oatmeal.

The boy did this.

Must have worked. That boy lived to be 96 years-old and when he died he left 14 children, 43 grand children, and a 15-foot hole in the ground at the crematorium.

Enough about holes in the ground.

One day of our anniversary trip, Ginny and I drove over to Troy Springs about 20 miles from our cabin. The overcast day and glare on the water stopped me from taking photos at Troy Spring, but I found some others with a Bing search.

Before The War, in 1854, Capt. James M. Tucker build a steamboat which he used as a floating general store servicing towns along the Suwannee River. When the invaders came, Capt. Tucker outfitted his steamboat with cannon, and his CSS Madison joined the Confederate navy.

Here’s a 100-year-old photo of the Madison:

Four times, the Madison darted out the mouth of the Suwannee into the Gulf to successfully attack enemy ships. The enemy wanted to capture the Madison and turn her guns against the South. But in 1863, as the enemy chased, Capt. Tucker scuttled the Madison in the mouth of Troy Springs. And there she sits today.

Here is a recent photo of the ship’s remains on the sand bottom in shallow water at the juncture of Troy Spring run and the Suwannee River:

When I was a Boy Scout during the 1950s, I dove on the wreck and plundered some iron spikes and boiler plate for our troop museum. (This was years before Troy Spring became a state park). So I particularly wanted to show the site to Ginny because of my happy memories of that place.

Here’s a recent photo of a diver on the Madison: wreck

Scuttled.

Deliberately sunk to keep the valuable ship out of enemy hands.

The thought occurs to me that sometimes God scuttles my perfectly good plans… He even scuttles perfectly good people. Perfectly good organizations and churches… Sunk. Vanished beneath the waters.

Couldn’t God preserve them?

Sure. But He chooses to scuttle good parts of my life to keep them out of enemy hands.

Things I once felt proud of, effective ministries, good jobs, happy relationships—you know the drill—are now only curios.

And tourists take pictures—if they even care.

But, and this is the important part, the enemy never got his filthy hands on them to turn them against God.

I’ve seen a lot of my dreams sink. If I regard them as senseless, arbitrary loss, regret overwhelms me. But if I think of them as scuttled, I still feel loss, but it’s an understandable loss.

Even an acceptable loss.

Tomorrow, God willing, I plan to write about more adventures of John and Ginny in still love and still exploring eachother and the beautiful world around us..

And I’ve got the best preacher joke ever.

Stay tuned to this station.