“What’s so special about Florida?” Here's the reason why I hike Florida and you should, too.

The Essence of Florida Hiking

It’s that time again, when the days become clear and dry and the evenings becoming cool and crisp, when our snowbird friends descend to join us on trails that are less muddy, less buggy, less hot than the rest of the year. They visit and show us photos of hikes in the long green tunnel of the Appalachian forests, of climbs above timberline in the Colorado Rockies, of walking behind a line of shaggy yaks along a narrow muddy track in Nepal. They talk of vistas, of views, of overlooks. We look, we sigh. We resign ourselves to our state’s overall elevation gain of a few hundred feet. There are no mountains to climb, no sweeping vistas to show off. They ask us, then,

“What’s so special about Florida?”

It’s a question I pondered time and again after moving from the leafy Appalachian foothills to the sandhills of Central Florida, and I was only able to answer it by spending time on the trail. Days, weeks, months passed, the subtle change of the seasons caught in an explosion of red maple leaves along the Econlockhatchee River, a slight fall chill at sunset. I searched for that special essence from the brilliant sugar sands of Pensacola to the marshes along the St. Johns River, on day hikes and loop trails, on backpacking trips on the Florida Trail. My answer?

It’s in the details.