Wild Azalea

It was a most beautiful spring day, sunny, in the 70’s with a clear blue sky so a trip to O’Leno State Park felt in order.  O’Leno park goes back to some old memories for me…..  O’Leno is one of those places you remember from childhood. One of those places you went to when you were young, it had some strange deep connection and mystery about it which haunts you to this day.   Sometimes in a dream, in a passing thought or in something someone said brings back flashes of your visit there.  O’Leno is one of those places for me.  It is an odd sort of place, an ancient place.  O’Leno is the place where the river disappears. 

Looking down river

 O’Leno is on the Santa Fe River although “on the” is perhaps not quite right.  To be “on the river” the river must flow past where you are.   The Santa Fe River does not flow past O’Leno but ends, like in a dead end, like a cul-de-sac street.  The river comes to an end, slowly circles around and just ends.  The duckweed on the top, a tree limb, an alligator on a log, just circling around and around and the water sinks into the earth.  It is like the whirlpool in the Odyssey with dangers on either side.  If you got stuck in the current and dragged down stream would you be sucked down into it never to reappear?   I would never go swimming there when I was a child.

The River Sink where the river goes underground

 

 

So on this beautiful spring day, so much later in my life, I find myself visiting O’Leno once again.  I as travel there I wonder will it hold the same mystery, the same haunts that it did when I was a child?  As I pull into the parking lot I see it looks much as I remember it, the same buildings, the slope down to the river and the suspension bridge across it.  But what of the whirlpool, the maelstrom?  It was but a short hike away. 

 
River Sink looking back upstream

  I cross over the bridge and take the path along the river towards the end, towards the whirlpool.  The path leads along the river with cypress trees on the river side and pine tress on the other.  The trees are in that bright spring leaf green bloom with occasional flowers.  It is quiet with an occasional bird and off in the distance the sound of children on the path.  I then come to the rivers end, the whirlpool, the maelstrom.  It is as I remember it, the debris in the river slowly circling around and the water disappearing.  It is not nearly as foreboding on this bright spring day as I remember it from when I was a child……   but the deep down feeling… what if I got sucked down into it still lingered deep within me.

 

 As I begin my journey back I hear the children again, it is a family, father, mother sons and daughter.   They look out at the whirlpool, see the alligator, see the slowly circling water and I see another generation and wonder, what does the end of the river mean to them?

Larry Mixson, 03-22-2019