Big Cypress Trail, Goethe State Forest

My friend and co-worker Diane turned me on to this hidden gem in Levy County. The trail has been open since 2002 but it remains a little-known, well out of the way hike. The round-trip is only a half mile but it leads to one of Florida's amazing botanical wonders: a towering cypress tree more than 900 years old.

Clearly marked as the "Big Cypress Trail," the narrow footpath leads down an ecotone along the floodplain forest. Here, all of the trees grow large - from water oaks to magnolias towering more than 40' high to saw palmetto lifting its trunks well over your head. Loblolly pines show incredible girth. After about a 10 minute stroll, you reach the boardwalk out into the swamp. En route, interpretive markers explain some of the trees, the habitat, and the importance of fire.

At the end of the boardwalk is the Big Cypress, and it's certainly impressive: by its consistent girth as it rise above you, you can assume its crown was topped off in a hurricane decades or centuries ago, as most of our state's ancient cypresses have been. Like those, this one was lucky. Back in the days when Cummer & Sons cleared the cypress forests from Gulf Hammock (just west of here) north up the Suwannee River, cypresses like this only survived the cut if they had a flaw. You can see several flaws that made it not "sawmill worthy," including some odd protrusions and a deep hole in the trunk where bees buzz some 50 feet overhead. Look to the left for another cypress of similar age and girth, much farther off the boardwalk.