I never cared much for history when I was young, maybe because all the
people who taught it had grey hair and wrinkled skin, and peered over glasses
that rested on tips of noses.
Now that my grandchildren put me into those categories, and I refuse
to use hair dye, skin tucks and contact lenses to refute them, I've become
curious about origins and reasons for being.
So it happened, after we moved to Ocala and my heart was stolen by the
Silver River, where I meander often in my old wood canoe, that I looked
for and discovered a fascinating story.
Some folks don't realize that when God made the world he made the Southern
Hemisphere first, for practice, and then started his real work of art at
the North Pole and moved South.
It took lots of energy and raw material for God to make Arctic ice floes
and deep cold oceans, magnificent creatures like whales and Polar Bears,
and hardy Eskimos to stand the weather.
Then God made but Bighorn sheep on rugged mountains with cascading rivers,
Moose in forests of the Northeast, and Bison on vast prairies. He made
rich black loam for corn and soybeans in the Midwest, and more mountains
from Pennsylvania to Georgia.
By the time God got to Florida he had run out of mountains, fresh water
and black dirt for corn. All he had left was sunshine and a long beach
of soft sand between the Atlantic and the Gulf.
Thinking peanuts and grass would do okay, God scattered seeds to prove
it, and then used leftover foothills to give Ocala a gently rolling countryside
so it would look a bit like Kentucky.
God planted some oak trees, but since their leaves would never turn
yellow and red and die in October he called them live oaks, and then he
planted cypress trees with spreading roots.
When God saw those thirsty roots reaching out for water he put a huge
rock shelf underground, so rainwater from Georgia would flow over that
shelf and collect under the sand of Florida.
Then he had all that pure filtered water just bubble up out of the sand,
in places like Rainbow and Juniper Springs. Feeling like he was on a roll,
God mixed some quartz in the sand around Ocala and made the best bubbling
springs come up right here.
When sunshine hit the quartz and sand in deep clear pools, people called
the place Silver Springs, and when a beautiful river wandered through cypress
and live oaks on its five-mile journey to the Ocklawaha, people named it
the Silver River.
God was pleased, but he wasn't finished. Such a perfect place needed
creatures to keep it company and add to its character.
In the river God put fish of many colors and styles, turtles with varying
snouts and temperaments, birds with long legs and necks for fishing, and
a black bird skilled at scuba diving.
For the woods he made white-tail deer, black bears, raccoons, opossums,
panthers, turkeys and other woodsy critters, and for fun he made the otter
to live on the land and play in the water.
But God realized he needed to keep order in the forest and in the river,
so he made creatures to rule over all the others.
For the forest he made a modification of clever, skilled and savvy people
he had made elsewhere, and came up with a caretaker he called a Seminole.
All the land animals admired him.
For the Silver River he had a special treat. Working without a model,
God designed a strong, silent creature that could lay in the sun and then
explode in fury, and he called him an alligator.
Things went well in the forest and on the river until the otter, full
of tricks and trouble, started asking other animals and birds and swimming
friends who they thought was really king of the Silver River, the alligator
or the Seminole.
At first the otter was ignored, but like most politicians the otter
kept on talking, and single-footedly created a controversy. Turtles argued
with raccoons, and coromants squabbled with bears.
So it was decided to settle the arguments with contests of skill and
strength in the water and on the land. Even though the alligator had the
advantage in water and the Seminole had a leg up on land, each did well
in the other's territory.
Suffering from the delusion that every contest must have a clear victor,
the contestants were goaded into a one-on-one wrestling match to the finish.
The otter, who really admired both the alligator and Seminole, and was
sorry he had started all the trouble in the first place, reluctantly agreed
to referee.
The creatures of the woods watched from behind the Seminole, and the
river creatures watched from behind the alligator, and the otter drew a
line in the sand and proceeded to count to three.
One....two....but the suspense was broken when a little Armadillo about
12 inches long came scurrying and shuffling and snorting along the line
in the sand, looking for bugs and worms.
Distracted and disgusted, the Seminole picked up the armadillo and threw
it deep into the forest, its body spiraling through the air as it sailed.
A white-tail deer, concerned for the little fellow, ran a zig-zag course
through the woods and caught the armadillo safely in his antlers, and all
the land creatures cheered.
Back to the business at hand, the otter counted again. One...two...and
suddenly another armadillo came scurrying, shuffling and snorting between
the contestants.
This time the distracted alligator, with anger and great power, swatted
the armadillo with his mighty tail and the armadillo sailed across the
river, end over end, right between two forks of a cypress tree on the other
bank.
All the water creatures cheered and splashed their approval of the magnificent
feat.
Suddenly the otter had a God-given thought, a way to save face for his
foolish questions that had brought these two magnificent creatures he admired
to a struggle of death.
The otter suggested that it might be more fun to see who could throw
and kick the armadillo most efficiently and effectively, and he said they
could call the contest football.
All the creatures of land and water cheered at the launching of a fierce
competition that continues to this day in Florida between the Gators and
the Seminoles, and only the playful otter, who started all the trouble,
is allowed to remain neutral.
(For the non-Floridians, The University of Florida teams are the Gators,
and the teams for Florida State University are the Seminoles.)
