Florida Panhandle
February, 2009

 

Pensacola

 

 

 

 

 

 

Night exposure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This bayside park area just north of Pensacola has an extensive system of rough single-track trails. It's accessible from two roadside parking lots. A boardwalk connects the two, descending the bluff at each end, meandering through the forest and along the bay.

The terrain and foliage of the rough trails reminds me of the gulley behind my house on Prestwood Bridge Road and other places around Andalusia (well — without the bay). I vividly recall enjoying those wooded areas as far back as 4-5 years old (the genesis of my environmentalism). So I loved getting out here and roaming these trails. I stayed out here maybe an hour or more. A fair amount of the time I stood quietly on some overlooks, feeling the cool bay breeze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pine cones evoke lots of those early memories of nature.

I even brought one back home to Miami.

 

 

 

A few miles farther north, I found this Florida Heritage Site for the Hyer-Knowles Planing Mill.

From the historical marker:

The chimney is the only trace of what was the first major industrial belt on the Gulf Coast, a string of antebellum wood mills and brick factories ... The chimney was part of the steam power plant for the Hyer-Knowles Mill. In March 1862, General Braxton Bragg was evacuating the Confederate forces holding Pensacola when Confederate Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin gave the order to "Destroy all machinery private and public, which could be useful to the enemy: especially disable the sawmills in and around the Bay."