The River Walk

The Experience

Between the ranch house and the river this property drops about fifty-five feet. In the mountains that is a rounding error. Here it is the difference between ground so dry it behaves like a desert and ground that spends part of every year underwater — and you cross the entire gradient in under fifteen minutes of easy walking.

Seven stops on the way down. The white sand, and the band of coffee-coloured hardpan a foot and a half beneath it that explains everything growing here. The saw palmetto beside the road that is very likely older than every tree you can see. The place where the ground gives underfoot and the pines hand off to cypress — a boundary that is on no map and announces itself to nobody, just an elevation contour that moves a little every year. And the cypress knees, which nobody has ever satisfactorily explained.

The last stop is the water, and we do not talk for the first two minutes. Then: the river begins in the Okefenokee Swamp about twenty miles north of here, travels roughly 130 miles to reach an ocean that is only forty miles away, has not one dam on it anywhere, and the middle of the channel in front of you is the Florida–Georgia state line.

Flat, soft sand the whole way, about seven-tenths of a mile out and back. No fitness required. Retreat groups can take the longer version, which adds silence rather than distance.

• A guide who knows what everything is
• Roughly seven-tenths of a mile, out and back
• Ends at the river landing and the sandbar

• Closed-toe shoes
• Bug spray
• Water in the warm months

• Retreat groups
• Wedding weekend guests
• Families with curious kids
• The first hour of any stay