GSJ: Connecting w Nature and Saving the Okefenokee

Hey y’all, how’s it going? How are you happy Tuesday? Uh, I’m Amy Sharma. I’m the executive director of science for Georgia. I’m so glad that y’all could join us today for this exciting edition of Georgia Science Junction, um.

Just a little bit about science for Georgia. We’re a non-profit that works to get science out of the lab and onto the streets, so we do three things we do communication training, uh, we do community outreach like this. So, thanks for being part of our community outreach, and then we go down to the general assembly, and we talk to legislators about making sure science has a seat at the table, um.

Really excited that y’all are here today, and uh helping us fulfill our mission, um. Our speaker is, um. Is Mark Alberton, uh, a long time ago? Um, when science for Georgia first started doing Outreach and advocacy, we got involved in the fight to save the Okifenokee. Mark was a very integral part of that.

He did a documentary about it. And he is the creator of the film Sacred Waters, which is the oak. It’s a really great, awesome film that we’ve all recently seen, and he also just did a hardcover book about the Ogie fenoki. Um, and it’s protection, but also just some incredibly beautiful imagery of the swap.

Um, so we’re really excited for him to give a a talk about the language of nature, so I’m going to let Mark take it away here. Thanks, everybody for coming. We’ve got a small group if you want to come sit close when you can. I really don’t bite, but if you’re public, it’s very friendly.

And if you all can hear me pretty good deal, they’ll hear me pretty good in here. Great! All right. So what I thought we do is I thought I would talk a little bit about the Old Pinocchio. You all came to hear about Duke Connecticut, so I’m going to talk about it, but I’m going to kind of give you a little background information to kind of start with to kind of get us there because there’s some things that Yogi for Noki revealed to me, but I want to share with y’all and that am I gives you more interested in going there.

There’s just a lot of pictures, so we’ll show both, but I’m going to get you to start the fish, so I’m titling this presentation language of nature. This learning to listen, see, and understand what the soul. You know, all this, you know, were born. We grow up, and this is the world we’re used to seeing most of the time.

You know, we look out the windows. As a child, we’re used to hearing your constant throwing of cars, emergency vehicles, um, traffic noises, street lights. We don’t really experience the Earth, where in kind of almost like a little Dome of the human civilization. Um. And you know, a lot of yards are this way.

It kind of is always ironic to me that people put these signs on their yards, because it’s like, okay, your kids are going to be playing on the yard anyway, so but, but, uh, but a model culture, basically environment, where really no birds, no bees. Nothing really can survive, and it’s, it’s something that I think has gotten us a lot of trouble over the years, and it’s getting worse because of that.

And so I, I grew up in that world. We all have had that experience my parents up from Wisconsin, uh, that’s 1964, that’s me. In the middle there, the little kid, and um, we had a little house in Suburbia, you know, and it was real nice, and we had trees to climb and what have you and I really loved it.

Um, and then we moved further my parents every time there was an encroachment of people around where we lived. They moved further away. And so, the first point where we were there in the first place we were only a few minutes from Milwaukee. The second place was like half hour, 45 minutes from Milwaukee.

And it was really beautiful. Second place, it was on Waterville Road. It was called Waterville, Wisconsin, and this is in the 1970s, and our family had grown, but my brother and I, my little brother and I, hey, you find some money? My little brother and I would go and catch snakes and frogs.

And um, and my sisters would ride horseback and do all their thing out there. We had pet Canada geese believe or not. They were imprinted with us and thought we were their parents, so my parents would have a party. They’d let the kids out the Eastern Graves along the grass while people were drinking DVD and their food.

So, it was a very different world. And it was, it was really cool situation. There’s our pet camp geese, and you know, you’re able to sit with them and talk to them. We ended up having an orphan pet raccoon named Rachel that we also had. So I mean all this stuff, and so then we had all these nothing around us, but Farm Fields, corn, and what they have them, and there was nothing around.

Um, so is it? For me, it was a wonderful environment grew up in because I’m Barefoot all summer long. On a hot coal, pretty much with my feet. I wouldn’t feel it because I was so used to walking gravel and what have? And then my dad one year decided that I needed to have a gun.

He got me a BB gun. And I was a terrorist with the BB gun I was shooting cans. I was breaking glass, I was. I’d sit at my class in the Army minute, Target cracks, and knock them out. You know, like, I’m combat and everything, and I love that gun.

And one day, there was a couple grapples up in the tree limb up above me. And I took aim and I shot one. And it fell straight to the ground. Good flap. There was a little dot of red blood on his chest. And I said, oh my God, I killed it.

And it was kind of like, all this time, when you’re shooting cans and plastic arming men and things, there is no real emotion. It’s not a living creaser, but I realize still, and then also. Next thing I know, the other grapple that was up there, which I’m assuming was.

This made started flying down at me and squawking and going crazy, and I’m like, what is what’s going on and I stepped away and that other graphical landed next to the dead one and was making all kinds of noise. At that point, I fell from extreme guilt and sadness because I had for no reason destroyed a relationship.

Two, two creatures that loved each other, obviously, and had relationship up. Until then, I really thought of all nature. I said, well, this is nice. But what can you do? For me, it’s just another creature out there. It’s kind of like, my, you know. Other possessions that we have?

So I, I, that was that. That experience is still with me and makes me feel guilty. Believe you’re not in this over 50 years. And it’s like, it’s like, I feel this, like, remorse. So then, then we lived. I lived in Wisconsin. I ended up moving to Milwaukee. My brother lived in Milwaukee and I went to school at a college, a technical College in Milwaukee, and I loved being in the big city.

Okay, because it was a lot of fun. We went to concerts he was Catholic, and so I went to the Catholic church and Leonard mass and lap and all this stuff. I love the city. They had Summerfest and all these cool things, great music, great food, and it was really cool, and I learned my background on a piece of technical equipment.

There was a big scanner where you scan pictures to make it digital. This is all in the analog world, and so I was really loving that well. I eventually moved South, and that’s when things started to change in my life, um. I started my career as a technical guy, but then I started looking into shooting video, and I loved shooting video.

And so, my wife and I, I said to her, I said. I’d like to take out a second mortgage on our house, or if you know what equity line basically to buy, this equipment is about thirty thousand dollars, and she was, like, oh my God, you know, you lost your mind.

Well, I had one big job right away. That would pay for half of it, so kind of reinforced the fact that, okay, this is probably a good thing. I’m gonna be okay, so I started doing all kinds of documentary work and shooting video all of the place and the videos did really well, um, I did them mainly about little small towns telling their story oral history, just like I did one in Savannah, I did one on, uh, Topeka, Kansas.

One on Jacksonville, one on Saint Augustine, and I would interview people in their later years of life telling about memories in the early part of the 20th century, and all those people are gone now, so I’m really glad I did that, but it was a great thing to have for each Tom because we’d have a Premier and we’d have all these people come with their family and friends, so it was always a lot of fun.

Well, then, at one point, I was asked to come do a film on Beaufort, North Carolina, and I’m not talking about you for it. I’m talking about fauxford, everybody says. If you’re talking about? So, it was a Beaufort, North Carolina, and not far from Wilmington. And it’s beautiful. If you’ve never been there, go to there.

It’s really pretty. But there’s a there’s Cape Lookout, which is just off the coast there, and you have to take a ferry to get over there. And I thought, why was there? I thought I’m going to take a couple days and go out to Cape Lakota Camp. I’m going to bring my camping gear with me and take a couple days.

Hey, you hear from the presentation, come on in, oh no. Okay, I’ll work. Yeah, I was about this. I, I make here. Okay, yeah. So, so, uh, so, um? I thought, you know, all this time in in Beaufort, Beaufort is great, but I want to go out away from Beaufort.

I want to get out of the way. So I took this Ferry out there, and I was the only one on the ferry. It was a it was a it was a Friday evening late, the last carry going out. I got on that Ferry, and I was, like, did the 40-minute trip on the ferry, and I was just there with the captain on the boat, and then we get to the dock, and there was like 30 people leaving, and I’m like everybody that was the last boat back.

And so, I was like, I’m going to be. The only one here on the island all night. Okay, look out. This is the fur. It’s really not an island. This is the furthest most tip of Skate. Hatteras, you know, comes all the way down, and it’s a real narrow barrier on.

But there was nobody there, and so I, I set up my tent. In a beautiful spot, um? The ocean is literally right on the other side of that little mountain there. It’s a little firm there, but all around me. With these beautiful flowers, we think they’re called. They have number names.

I’ve heard them called Indian blanket. They’re a number of different names, and they’re absolutely beautiful. And they’re all over the place. One of the things that has happened to me with this whole experience with spending time alone out in nature. Is, you start to. See things that you didn’t seek for.

It’s, it’s almost like a realization that there’s more than just I’m walking on this Trail. Well, wait a minute. Let’s look at this plant destroyed Garland’s Trail, oh, and look at that insect. That’s on that plant, and you start to notice your surroundings because the surroundings are super interesting.

And to me, it’s like. When I look at stuff on in our world, our civilized world, it becomes very boring. When I go out into major, because everything we have is a duplicate of what was done before. And this is all fresh and new. When I go out there.

So that night I camped, and uh, it was a full moon that night, and it was warm. It was a warm day, but I had all the things open, so I get the the air coming from the, uh, coming from the ocean, and it was so bright, it was like daylight, and I could walk around and see exactly where I was going because the full moon.

And they have some Lighthouse out there, which is really cool, and that was doing this thing. The next morning, I got up before Sunrise, and I thought, oh, I want to get that Sunrise. It’s going to be beautiful, and I got out of my tent. I went to the beach.

Well, to my surprise, there was a really big storm brewery, and so the sun was back behind here, so I didn’t get Sunrise. But I got this View, and the view was phenomenal. And while I’m standing there, the Thunder is happening, and you see lightning in the distance and a little bits of rain are hitting in your face.

It’s like, if that’s not God speaking, I don’t know what is, I mean, it was. It was a tempest that was powerful. It was a little frightening, but as I stood there, I was like, you know? I don’t see any lightning nearby. I’m just gonna enjoy this. And a few minutes later, I got soaking wet, but it was beautiful.

Some people under some of those anyway. So, so I, I kept doing the films and everything went really super. Well, I had I got a few in the city of Beaufort, which is great. I know what that means. I don’t know if I can run through the town with scissors.

I don’t know what that means, but I got the key to the town. I got the mandatorian work for a film I did in Beaufort, South Carolina. For film, I did about about Milky kenoki. But, as time went on, I kept shooting more and doing more things. Um, I did a film called that, what cost?

And it’s not a pipeline. The kindergarten pipeline that was going to come through Georgia and the whole idea was to get the word out there. Because film is a very powerful medium, as we all know, and you can really have a lot of people coming in at one time through this whole project, putting in their input that people can watch and learn about.

You can put up facts and information, and that’s what the whole idea was. So, I kind of ranched off of doing historical videos and more activism, environmental films. Then, I started playing with, uh, these uh, old school film cameras. And that was really where I found I slowed way down with it with these because an old school camera is so different than a regular digital camera.

It forces you to slow down because you have only a certain amount of pictures that you can work with. And in 2020 came. And we all remember what happened in 2020? Everybody was shut down. There was, you know, you couldn’t go out and be around people. I don’t know when it first happened with the the pandemic.

We were trying. We were thinking about buying UV lights to put under our put fire groceries. We need to bring home as it was, we were washing everything, which was really tedious. Um, and it was frightening and. I was having adverse effects of covet, I wasn’t. I didn’t get covered at this point, but the stress and worry of what’s happening in my world and and not being able to talk to anybody, it’d be around anybody.

I would talk to my friends on Zoom. A lot of times, that was the only way we’d communicate. We’d get together and have a beer on Zoom, and there was three or four of us, and it’s like, well, it’s good to see it, but it’s not quite the same that’s getting together with your friends and in person.

So, I was having all kinds of problems health problems. Because of this, I think it was all stress related. And then the two dear friends of mine, Kerry and David. They live in Upstate South Carolina, uh, up by Lake chakasi. Has anybody ever heard Lake chapasi? Gorgeous! And we had about 90 acres of land up there, and they said, look.

I told him what was going on, he said. Look, you won’t have to get around us. We can sit outside and eat. Why don’t you come up here and spend the weekend with us? He said I’m there. So I got up there and when I got to their place.

They were not home. They were at work, but there was a note on the door that said make yourself at home. Uh, the dogs would love to go for a walk with you on the land. There’s Trails, why don’t you go for a walk? So, so I got there, and I got the dogs, and we went for a walk, and there’s the dogs there, and again.

I slowed way down. My head was spinning. When I got there, I was, like, oh my God, I gotta find a rescue. Where am I gonna stop? Gotta get the gas, you know? I got there and was, like, all that mattered is what was in front of me at this point, and they were beautiful mushrooms growing all the place.

I mean, just that, it’s almost like Artistry that you can’t imagine is so beautiful and the smells. There are different flowers growing. This little stream Little Creek was flowing along there. And I walked along it for quite a ways with the dogs and all of a sudden. The stream was gone.

There was just sand, and this is what it looked like, and it looked like almost little cities here with the stones and the rocks that have been carved away in the sand. And listen, and you can still hear the stream except it was underneath the Earth, and that was the first time again.

This ever happened to me before it was so bizarre. So, we walked along and I came to, uh. A point where it flowed down a little small waterfall. And I looked down in that water, and that sand had that look. It’s almost like the metallic flakes. You know what I’m talking about this term for that, but they’re real small, little shiny?

And it looked soft, and it’s cold as ice because it was spring fed. I took off my shoes and put my feet in that water and the dogs looked at me. I said I’ll be with you in a few minutes. Let me just chill for a few minutes here.

Well, it turned out. I sat there for three hours. The dogs left they went on their way. They got gave up and left, but I sat there, and it was just. It was just most relaxing, Serene thing, listening to that water. And just enjoying that, and I sat there.

And next to me was a little cool over here out of the current. And Elise fell down into that pool, and it just circled around. It was almost like a little ballerina dancing there, my own private show, and then the the leaves got pulled into the current and started going down the stream, and it was almost like all those problems that were on my back.

They went with it. So, when I got back up to the house, we Carrie David got home that afternoon later after he’s sitting down there pretty much all afternoon. I was not the same person that arrived. Um, it. I felt so much better. There was no prescription or medicine that could have made me feel the way I felt after this.

The next day, Kerry took me out to Lake Takashi, and that’s Lake tripowski. Um, does anybody here seen movie Deliverance? Bruce and gruesome movie, but at the very beginning. They show the construction of Lake drakashi. Electrocost is a man-made lake, and they were carving and cutting, digging, and the storyline in the movie was that this little town all these communities would be underwater, because if this was one of those work projects that they were doing so.

That’s Lake Tostkasi. It’s a very deep lake. It’s very cold because it’s very fed, but again, they’re all kids things, and at one point, Carrie said to me, we’re on a pontoon boat. She took me out to one of these waterfalls, and she said jump in and swim under there and get up to that waterfall and not get a picture of you.

I said you crazy. I’m 60 years old. I’m going to die. If I do this, there’s no way she said. Come on, so I said, you know, what the hell and I dived in that water? I drove in the water, and I went underwater, and it was freezing cold and I could feel the current cushion against me and I came up.

I said, you know, you’re going to die. This thing was a strong cream, but I got up to the got up to the bottom of the falls, and she took that picture. You, the whole trip home from the car. I had stereo playing full blast and I was singing music all the way back.

My attitude was completely off the chart. I felt so great, and that’s again. What? It was pushing me to do something different, and I did something different. And then nature was there, and it was always that we can, you know, that that peace that I felt when I saw major?

You know? I mentioned before, you know, that some of the things that I see when I go out there can be the smallest and tiniest of things. But sometimes they make the most impact, you know, finding an old shell, or, or, you know, hearing a certain bird, I mean it.

Just to me is amazing or sitting and watching the sunset alone. Just, you and the Earth, and there’s things that happen. And I, I I entitle this thing that the resolution’s not real good? I’m sorry, but this is, uh, this is in a town called Mayfield, which is near Warrenton, Georgia.

I don’t know if y’all, it’s a small town, and there’s the Milky Way, and that’s just about fifty miles an hour West of Augusta. Beautifully. Again, I camped out there overnight. It’s an old meal, a friend. I have no Osseal bridge. Now, she’ll let me stay there. This is out in New Mexico.

So? So all this has happened to me. All these things have started happening, and he started me reevaluating. Everything that I’ve been told. Because you know when you’re when you in our civilized, our civilized society, we’re told. Life is a certain way. You do this, you do this, you do this.

You live this way. You do this, and I’m not saying, go crazy run, you know down the highway? I mean, I’m just saying. I started thinking differently about the way I live my life. This is not the right way to live as far as I’m concerned. In fact, that makes me uncomfortable to live in that kind of situation.

That’s much more. What I want to be around. That’s one of the pictures I take totally. You’re tot. We’re taught. You know words English language math Sciences, but when I go out in nature, I’m taught something completely different. It’s like, there’s a language that you’re not taught in school.

I love this. This is on the coast, and these are just these little. They remind me of bangs in your arm, and that’s from the water running back into the pour through the tide through the sand. But clouds in the sky, the textures, and the details. And then, when you look at nature, it’s a raccoon print.

And it’s like, you know, it’s like. We’re so similar, and we, we think of ourselves as being different, but we’re really not. Clouds. Again, I love files. They’re amazingly beautiful. Birds. I mean, it’s just all the different things you see, even the smallest things. Like, I say, I’ll find myself looking at the the texture on the back of the snail here and in the trail that is left.

You know. And then you look at the the details of the bird’s wing, and it’s so amazing when you think about it. And the different colors are so beautiful and watching them interact and sing. And this is on both right here. And then again, I spent a lot of time camping alone and with friends.

This is on Cumberland Island, which if you have been, there is really worth going. It’s really beautiful. And then again, sitting outside at night and just watching the stars. One of the things I enjoy more than anything. When I camp alone is getting up in the middle of the night.

A lot of people stay in their tent and close down. That’s not me. I want to get out, especially if I’m far away from civilization and get up and get outside. Go outside and sit and watch the stars. Usually, there’s a bar doll making noise in the distance, and I get to listen to fire Doll chanting back and forth, um, so.

Some of the films I’ve done over the years, so I’ve done quite a few different documentaries. And you see, I did one on Cumberland Island, Beaufort, North Carolina. I did one on World War II veterans. I did want to Dave the powder. A lot of people probably heard about him.

Um, it did one on Augusta called finding home. Didn’t want to buy the little area called the bomb plant, where the cement Riverside came in. All these people were pushed out of that area. Um, I didn’t want about a football guy, a guy that’s really good in football. A friend hired me, and then I did one called Adler cost, and that was a pipeline video I talked about earlier.

And then I was asked to do another film, and this one was really damn. The timing was perfect because I was like. You know, I was really having this Awakening about nature and really like, you know, they said, hey, we’d like to hire you to stay in the Okie canopy, smile and film, and make a documentary for us.

It seen the film I did on the pipeline. They see. They saw the film again on Cumberland Island, and I was, like, okay, yeah, when you want me to start, you’re like. Now, this was in July. I’m like, uh, now, and you want me to go to the Okifenokee swamp.

Now, I’ve never been there. Honestly, speaking at that point, which is really sorry that I hadn’t been there the first time I went to the Okinoki swim I’ve ever heard about. It was on bike ride across Georgia, and we had peddled from, uh, from Bainbridge. All the way across the state.

And it was one of the last nights, and we were staying in Waycross. And they said, we got a bus, and we’re going to take the Okifenokee if you want to go. And I’m like, are you kidding me, thunderclouds? See, we’re building. I was sweaty. I was going to take a shower and stretch out on TV and stretch out and watch TV and get some food and chill out and recharge for the next day of bike riding.

That was the first time I heard of it, and that was the last time I dealt with or heard about it for about 20 years. Until they asked me to do this, so I’ve never been there. I went with a good friend of mine who would help me out and we went there.

And within 15 minutes, my perspective, the ultimately changed completely. I was expecting mosquitoes, the the everybody was talking about these yellow flies. I’m, like, oh my God, the yellow flies will kill me, you know? I thought I was just so you know this horrible. It’s gonna be bad. It’s been so hot, we coated ourselves a bug spray, and I had a mosquito netting.

I mean, I looked like I was ready for the tropical jungle someplace and we got there. We went down this Boardwalk and along the boardwalk were were. Uh, getting cypress trees growing. Beautiful shade. There were giant butterflies swallowtails that were flying by over our heads, and I’m like they were huge.

I’ve never seen one this big. And there were irises all the place growing as we got more into the olden Prairie. And I was like, this is amazing. And there was a tower that we signed up when we got to the top of the tower and we started looking out and it was like the view was as far as you can see.

You know, one of the problems that I have in the city is, I’ll be driving someplace in the open, and I will see a beautiful. Cloud setting and I’ll be like, oh, I want to photograph that when I get home, I’m going to see if I can get that it’s up in the sky, but once I get home, I realized I can’t prograte.

But there’s power lines everywhere. There’s buildings I can’t do it here in the O’Keefe Milky in the Prairie, where this picture was taken. They called the Prairie. You have a 360 degree view around you so you can look at the sky and just keep looking, and it’s all the way around you see, you can watch confirmations form here and then up over here.

It’s amazing, and the clouds are just. They were the best part of the trip. As far as I understand, the clouds and you have this is Billy’s Lake. It’s called, and uh. If y’all go they have, you don’t have. You can rip a kayak or a canoe, but they also have content boat that they’ll take out on the guy that’ll talk about everything that’s there, or give you a really good recap.

It was there. I’m not trying to be a plug for the York. You cannot be smart, but I turn around. You can camp if you want to and rough it, which I did quite a bit. But during the hot months and cold months, I stay in their cabins, and they have cabins there.

At Stevie C, Foster State Park and the cabins have air conditioning, the heat they have full kitchen. Two bedroom, or, you know, say, a full bath, all you need bring is your food, and you can cook in your kitchen. Do whatever so. You want the pallet during the day.

Come in at lunch time. Chill, relax, read a book and go back out the gaming. That’s one of the other views out there. It’s just magnificent, so one of the times when I was out there in a smile. We were out in the boat and we were sitting there and there were these.

I call them Peter frogs. They’re really high fish. So, we’re sitting here, let’s say, facing this way. And I can hear them chirping, like, crazy to our right. And they started getting louder and louder and louder until all the frogs around us were tripping. Loudest computer, since those almost definite.

And then, it’s like it went from us and kept going. So, it was like one of these, you know, like, you know, a wave or something, you know, it was really crazy. I’ve never experienced that before, and it was just again in the 18th and okay. There’s a lot of magic.

The thing I was frightening about the oceanoke, you know, when I camped on the platform the first night I was on the platform? I was all excited when I got there. I got my tent all set up, and I’m like, that’s perfect. I had my my freeze-dried food. I had my spaghetti, and uh, I’m chilling out up there, relaxing and listening to Birds.

There’s a lot of these guys in the yoga Penelope, and at night you take your flashlight and shine around, and you see brown orange eyes watching you all the way around, and it’s a little scary. Um, they never bothered me when I was there, except for one time, uh, but most of the time I just swing away.

They don’t allow you, you know, but um, it was a little creepy. That was, and these are a couple pictures I took up out in the Prairie again. The clouds smear just if you’re just insane, they’re beautiful. And, and the reflection and the lily pads, this is one of the little channels that you can paddle on, um, it just.

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and it was hot in the open, but there’s plenty of places where you can palette and go under cypress trees and with much shelter. And it’s amazing when you get under the trees, how much cooler it gets, I will tell you. That make the yellow flies do exist, and they are voracious.

They will swarm you. So, if you go into the shape, that’s where the yellow flies are waiting. So, and you do not want to wear dark clothing. Blue jeans are not a good idea. Dark shirts are not ideal the way you’re dressed is perfect. Light colors are perfect. Not only do they keep you cooler, but the main flies for some reason don’t seem to notice them as much so.

Um, that’s a night view out there. It’s just to me, it’s just it’s surreal. Uh, the light, the color, the sounds all night long, looking at the water. The water is almost like a mirror to the sky. Um, one night, I was out on a crew paddle, and we went out with a group of people, and we went out in the middle, this Phillies Lake they call it, and uh, we were looking for shooting stars.

We saw two shooting stars, but at one point, the guy told us, she said, if your necks are getting tired from looking up. Just look down in the water because it’s the exact mirror. What’s up, here it was perfectly mirrored. The water in the ulti snowing? It’s filled with tannics.

Are y’all familiar with tannins? Um, it? It’s a very highly acidic water. Years ago, when Sailors were coming to Port to, like, St Mary’s, or what have you, they would get water from the Saint Mary’s River? Or the Solani River. Because those Waters were highly acidic, and they put that in their barrels to take back out the seed with them because it wouldn’t go stale as fat fast.

They would save pressure because they say the bacteria doesn’t like to grow in there, and I was cold. I didn’t do this, and I wouldn’t advise you to do this, but I was told you could drink that water. It wouldn’t probably get bacterial sick, but yeah, you didn’t hear that from me.

Don’t do that, but, but anyways, it’s just so beautiful. Another black and white into it. There’s a storm brewing, and this is the smoney, uh? Uh, we’re coming out here. It turns into the river after this, but now. So? I talked about the comparison between. You know? Uh, different places that we’re used to seeing.

And I’m not going to pick on the church here in any means, but when I go to the Old Tinoki. I feel like it’s a it’s a spiritual experience. And the reason why is because you look at that church interior and you look at that. What is what do you see?

I mean to me, I feel like I’m in the cathedral. I feel like I’m a church. This is again the open Penelope. And it’s just amazing. And the cypress trees that are in there are beautiful and the Moss that hangs down, just like an old man’s beard hanging down that needs to be trimmed.

It’s gorgeous, um. There’s fish in the water here. Two different types of fish that I can twelve, three or four, really. But they’re not really the best eating fish. There’s what’s known as a boat, then anybody heard of both men before. Both of them are very prehistoric, and they have sharp teeth, and when you get when you get them if you catch them, you use the pliers and you use some kind of like a a glove that has, like, steel mesh into it or fire mesh into it so you can get your hands to chewed up.

They’re very aggressive, and uh, if fishermen love the cashew as they fight like, crazy, yeah. There’s also what’s known as warmoff? And, and, uh, I’ll take down here. They called him, called him up. We call them Pike up north. What’s called Jack down here, but they’re long, thin, and I think there are some cars in there also.

You’ll see tons of turtles. Uh, all kinds of turtles everywhere, uh, in there sunning themselves as you go along and the Burrs if you like birds. This is the place to go here. You’re going to see so many different birds. Um, and uh, if you’ve got Merlin on your phone, which is a great bird identifier.

You’ll probably max out on there, because there you hear so many different birds. It’s crazy. So, here’s me, the stupidest talking a little bit here. Let’s see if you can hear me. So, here I am. Almost there. The sun’s coming down until six o’clock. And I love the clouds from Horizon, a small pools of cotton.

Beautiful oranges and colors of sunset. Contrasting against the beautiful blue sky. If you want to see it’s, it’s all the sound. There’s a few Birds. Once in a while, I’ll fly over very high in the sky, and you’ll feel that, other than that. It’s almost definitely so sound. You start to listen to all the different birds from different sounds.

And you realize just who magical. This place is. So, Allison, a Euphoria trip when I was there. As you can tell, it’s just amazing. That’s I. When I mentioned to you when we first got there the first time, the first trip I spent a whole summer and into the fall.

I finished that film, and then I went back down there to do a book, and so I had plenty of time all through the year with different Seasons, so I experienced it all. All four seasons basically and. At this Tower, you can look out and you just see, like, you say, it’s forever.

There are no power lines. There’s no buildings. There’s nothing. And it’s, it’s a view. I think one of the reasons why people feel so adamant about protecting this place is because it’s a view that we don’t see anymore. This view that was once here, but it’s pretty much gone.

And it’s one of the few places you can go to feel that view. I mean, when I was traveling, you’d come around a corner someplace. And at times, I thought, oh my God, I’m going to see a brontosaurus, you know, coming and chewing on something and some smart matter because it’s so wild and so remote feeling and so quiet, you know, as they say, once in a while, you hear a plain flyover.

But other than that, there’s nothing. Uh, the Gators will Bellow. Uh, during certain times of the year, and that’s a very strange sound. If you’ve never heard of gator Bellow, it’s a very different sound. My film sake of water is very open. I have one belly. Yeah, it’s crazy.

What is that in the car background? Is that? These are trees. This is Cypress. Yeah, they’re trees, so it’s like that’s the only thing you’re going to see, you know? And uh, it’s just it’s just crazy. It’s, it’s amazing. So, you know, I? I talk about this because, you know, if we forget how to listen because we cannot hear the Earth, we cannot teach the next Generations and one of the concerns I have is that?

Younger people. It’s kind of like a a domino effect, you know? Reality, is this? The narration’s reality. See a little different Next Generation a little different, and generation is less of a native. Land or Wildland less and less? And that concerns me greatly because if you don’t understand it, how will you miss it?

If you hear about a big data center coming in and sucking all the water out of a pond or a lake someplace. Or, or damaging an aquifer? It’s like. You know, why? Is that a big deal? Hey, we may do more computer stuff. This’ll be great. You know your mind is not in tune.

What the, the consequences are all this technology and all the change that we’ve got going on, you know? Um, I’ll tell you a couple of quick examples here. Something that really was embarkly remarkable. I mentioned my friend Carrie and David that that plays up. I like chakasi that I went to.

What she does for a living is she takes kids out. She has what’s known as a wild child camp, and she takes a pontoon boat with kids and their parents out onto Lake trapase. They go on to some of the islands in the Middle Lake and the kids. The kids love it.

The kids go out there first. It’s very quiet. It’s kind of like my trip up to that area, how it was from you. I wasn’t feeling well, the kids were scared. You can see if their faces they’re out of this boat, but then they get out there on this island, and they start catching salamanders and tadpaws, and you hear screaming and laughing, and then running in the water.

And the whole trip back. She brings musical instruments, and they’re playing Bondo drums and singing. And if that just makes you feel good, I don’t know what does. It’s amazing to watch them. Change. You know, and to somebody different and learn how beautiful that is. Um, I interviewed some some teenagers from a school here in Atlanta, called the new school, and the new schools were really Progressive school, and they took a bunch of their students down to Yolkinoki for, like, four, or five days.

They had a really large group that was going to go originally, and a lot of them backed out with last minute because they sold great and frightened to go down there. You could take the biggest bully, the strongest guy or gal in school down the Okinoki swamp, and they’d be panic at who saw wolf spider.

They jumped and fall, you know, run back home because a lot of them is so foreign that it just freaks them out, but the same thing happens with these kids. These teenagers, their phones they weren’t using because they couldn’t get any reception down there, which was really a great lesson.

Um, you had to go to the visitors center and sit there in the in the vision center to actually get any kind of connection, and so they were talking to their classmates. One of the kids told me that she said, I really didn’t know the students in my class, hardly at all.

But now, after this trip, I know them. We paddled together, we got lost, almost. You know, we we saw bear, you know, I mean they, they had an absolute blast, and so all this is in my head going, you know? Gosh, this is what this is something kids need to learn, and at a young age, they need to experience this and have the time to go out.

So that is my presentation. Um, I’m happy to answer questions. I didn’t give you a ton of milk yet or something, but I thought this is important message. I wanted to get across to y’all, I mean. Having camped alone a lot. It’s almost like the Earth speaks to us if you can only listen and hear it.

Um, we’re so busy with our phones. And, you know, calling people and texting, and we’re so busy with with noise and all the things that are part of civilization that we’re really missing out a lot. And when I go out into nature and I go places alone, especially alumn.

I used to be afraid. I’m not afraid of, you know? In fact, I relish it. I look forward to it. Um, and when I come away, it’s like something has been said to me, but there’s been no words. Something’s been brought me to here and to hear. But there was nobody telling it.

So that is kind of where I’m coming from with this with my little presentation here. So, um, so the takeaway is? Please go to the open from empty smile. And please fight for the planet because we need to. You need to leave something for the next generation.

So, the documentary is that like, available? It’s online, I’m saying, I’m my cards are up here. I’ll get your card, and just, uh, I’m gonna go there and go to my website. And on my website, you’ll be able to find the link to it and watch it. One man party and I’ll stream it, and what have you?

Any other questions? I can plan your trip to build something else. You just let me know. What’s that?

What’s that? No, I. Well, I did. I did do some stuff up there. Yeah, I did. I did. A I was still looking Canton actually, um? The historical site. Contact me. We did a film about the the. It’s racing of. Of Camp, which was not easy, and we interviewed a bunch of people telling their stories of what went on and how the transition happened.

It happened started with a bunch of black kids that sat not in the back that came sat downstairs and the regular, and when they weren’t supposed to and. When they went to leave, there was a bunch of guys outside with clubs, and luckily this woman came by with her car and getting your kids and they’re beating the car.

And they got out of there, but that was just one of the stories. And it’s like, you know, a lot of people don’t want to hear this stuff. It’s, like, oh my, gosh, like half in here, we don’t want. We don’t want to do that, because that’s going to hurt tourism, but it happened.

You don’t want to. You’ve got to preserve the past, or we’ll repeat it, you know. And so, it’s very important. Yes, ma’am. 349 any kind of tricks. Maybe I’ll do that. I’m thinking about retiring next year. So, uh, maybe I can start doing that. It could be my little sub thing that I can do because I do know the place to go when I was, uh.

When I was doing the Okie dokie film? I had a limited amount of time to do it because we knew that this mining company was working hard to come and do their thing, and uh, and they told me that the, uh, the Coalition basically said, we’ve got to get this done as soon as possible.

I’m like, that’s why I went down in July. I was there in July and August, building like a Maniac, um. But I figured this is the only way I’m going to do this. I’m not. This is not going to be a a leisurely thing every day. I’m gonna have to have somebody take me out in a boat to the places I want to go, dump me off.

Take me over here whatever, so I know where I need to be. So we went all over the place. In a short amount of time, I shot all kinds of Wildlife and filmed all kinds of things. When I did the book, which was months later. I did the book because we had gotten out with film on social media and it was out there.

People could see the film and then streaming. It got awards the film festivals. It was really, I felt really good about it, but it seemed like our government was not doing anything at all to stop what was happening and just kept moving forward and Twin Times. The mining time was moving forward.

You’re still getting anywhere, like, crap. This is going to happen. Yeah. And so, I took a cue from a famous photographer that had filmed photograph years ago, called Ansel Adams. Yeah, he did a book that focused on the Sierra Nevada range, and he sent a copy of that book to, uh, Roosevelt, uh, not Teddy, but cranklin, and, uh, Rosedale, loved it.

A couple of years later, it was protected. So, I was like, if you do a book, it’s almost like a Trojan course because. Somebody gave me a nice pocket table book! Wow! Look at these pictures if they start reading through that book. Maybe you can tap into their head a little bit subliminally.

What the words are saying, what they’re talking about, why we should protect this place? And so that’s where I saw these folks. We were up there, and I had 270. I don’t know how many I had books, and I got there one morning up at the state house, and I had signed them off, and I took him up there and dumped them off and said, can you give these to the Senate and the house members?

And they said, yeah, we can do it, so all of them got a copy of the book. Something was really cool, so that was a really great day. For me, I was thinking he sent it to the governor because you know you gave it to all of it, all of them.

So, so I figured, cuz then I bought things this way. Some of them are going to leave him in the office on their desk. Somebody comes in there and picks it up while they’re waiting. Oh, what’s this? Or maybe take them1 home? Maybe their spouse looks at it goes.

Hey, you know, you should not vote this way on this. You should go this way, or the kid looks at it and gives the pressure you never know. So, to me, it’s a great idea, and it works so anyways, so yes, so what kind of chain are you used through fine and Mike?

So I use a number of black and white cameras. I have a gear door eight by five. Was assume 8 by 10 negative. When I was in the swamp, these big format cameras were really difficult to use. Let me tell you because you’re in a boat most of the time, and a boat is not stable, and the exposures you have to take are a lot of times very long exposures.

This is all technology, you know, film speed. I don’t know if you all remember this fatality. Many of you are two younger members, but used to be that you have like a 400 speed film. That doesn’t give you a lot of room to work with most of the cameras.

Now, you can go up to 3200 or even higher, and you can shoot it whatever you want. Get plenty of light in the picture file. It’s wonderful. I’m talking digital camera, um, so I’ve used that. I also had a four by five foam camera. I’ve got a Hasselblad 120 camera, and those were my weapons of choice that I used when I was out there in this one.

Um, I was always worried that something happened. We tip over and go. They, they’re gone, you know, but they never have some things would. But, uh, it was. It was, it’s funny because I have so much gear the canoe that I was using literally the whole middle and front was back and stuff because you got your camping gear.

You had your tent and I’m an old guy, so I like to have a nice big cab that I can stick on inside the tent that you know. It’s not that much thickness to it, so your back’s not laying on the hard surface. And so, I got this big, huge roll thing in there.

And then, I got like two bags of camera here and tripods and 10. And the canoe. So it’s like, it’s packed, you know? It’s a beautiful place, and I I need to go down there again. I find myself every time. The world gets more crazy. I find myself wanting to escape and go away and get out into the woods or some place like that, and maybe that’s what my dad.

Maybe it was, my parents were the same way. Maybe I inherited that, and then, because they kept moving further away when people would move in so? Anyways, but I’ve been a great audience. Thank you for coming tonight. Thank you. You see me, Mark, uh, yeah, I’ll I’ll, uh, so?

All right, uh? Ah, I didn’t hear you. Oh good, uh. So, um? Just, uh, some backstory. So, uh, we were part of the Coalition fighting a monarchy mining, um. The Georgia General Assembly never did anything about it. Neither did Governor Kent, but. The EPD took over four years, looking at the mining permit, which is about three and a half years longer than they take.

So, all of this public pressure the documentary, the thief. Was like, it’s typical delay, delay, delay. Twin Pines basically ran out of money, and they were able to sell it to a conservation land. So, like, it’s not permanently solved. But like, this was a huge. It was a huge Victory when that all got sold.

And that whole, like all of this, like your documentary and all these pictures and the books. All this, like constant public pressure DB was, like, oh, maybe we gotta look at it again? And maybe I’d like that that, like, stretched the runway out long enough to enjoy your organ against.

Uh, so um, the Okie phenobie swab is kind of like a big Basin, and on one side is this ancient formation called Trail Ridge, which is an ancient Coastline, and that has a lot of minerals in it, and they wanted to mine Trail Ridge. But imagine if you had a bathtub and took away one wall?

There would be a swamp anymore, right? So like, and they kept saying it was going to be okay. And we’re all like, that’s not how gravity and science works so, uh, but they that was their whole thing. They wanted Trail Ridge is really good for mining, and so the whole thing was like, just don’t.

Not here, right. And so, um. That was, the thing was, a company from Alabama, too. Yeah, right? Also, it kind of didn’t go, yeah, and they were like. Like, you know how, like when you like, read about a company, and then you just read it, and they’re awful. Like, every time they’ve done everything they’ve like, gotten they like, burned greasy tote railroad ties.

They, like, always flout. Like, every environmental regulation, I remember, like. Well, you know the, the thing that’s also happening. We were talking about this earlier, is that it looks like they’re getting closer to becoming a world heritage site, which impacts that would be wonderful. And that’s happening delayed because of the other nights.

Is coming through, right? Right, yeah, so that that really helped the World Heritage stuff. Hopefully we’ll go through. And yeah, so it’s, uh, I mean, it’s an environmental system like this long, and Sierra Cub is involved. Yeah, yeah, everybody. It was, like, the whole state. It was crazy. And you know, sadly, a lot of people like folks, them, which is one world towns down there.

A lot of them are, like, all the mines could be good. That’s going to bring jobs, and these companies come, and they prey on towns that are depressed economically, and they saved the whole. We’re bringing jobs sadly with truth and matters. They’re bringing their people they’re going to not train many people if they train you, but it’s not going to be a good job.

They’re bringing their people. Yeah, exactly. You know, they’re they’re going to bring their people in there. They’re going to get the job done and get out of there, ice detention Facility in folkston, so they got some things. Yeah, well, they, um, it’s just crazy, you know they, uh, I went to their website, uh Twin Pines website?

Like animation, showing the mining process and on the website, they said, we’ll make it better than it was before. Oh, so this thing may do better than. Yeah, they’re gonna make it. Yeah, right? Um, they said they were trying to mine Titanium. Yeah, and trying to make it seem like it was a National Defense situation.

Yeah, but there’s being very prevalent in lots of different places. And but you use a lot of water when your license in potatoes and they were going to pump out of the swamp along with everything else, so billions of gas we’re serving the ground so that they have more water fueling out the atmosphere, and it would be using this water from the Sun.

And the Pokemon swamp is the largest black water stock in in North America. Wow, and it is full apart. It’s a Parkinson. It’s a huge Parkinson, you know, when it catches fight? All of that goes back into the universe, and so if it was not met, like, it happened like something like that did happen, like a decade ago, or something like that.

You will get wildfires like without that water without those things going. It will destroy it. Yeah, the interesting thing with the economics is also the fact that the okay focusing is smart brings in a lot of Tourism. Yep, brings in a lot from it, so it had like 850 tourist jokes, or like, like tourists like period jobs, bringing in like six million tourists seed.

A whole bunch of other money. And the swamp is where the shrimp and the crabs from the coast spawn. So, if the swap’s gone, you’re losing millions of dollars of Industry also. So economically didn’t make any sense for a mining concern would be in there for upside down. And you know, right now, right now.

We’re this battle is taken care of, but see there’s big big deal. There’s a conservation fund. There’s a company they bought that. They basically purchased that land down. There bought out the mineral rights and everything, but like you were saying, Trail Ridge continues on up along the side of the swamp there.

They can come back another mining company in the future, and we have the same energy all over them, and I will say the part of the continued pressure is to protect that whole part of it. And also, if you think about the good people, folks, in one of those jobs.

So, like Dupont came in, and so they are going to mine like 30 years ago, and they got kicked out and they promised to do Economic Development down there with the state, and then they never did. And now, the states now promising to do Economic Development down there again.

So, I like, that’s on us to. Like, yeah, we save this Okefenokee, but now we need to keep the pressure up. The good people folks and will continue to invite the mining companies back until someone helps them come up with jobs for their account. So I think that’s a we need to remember that.

That’s why they asked them there. In the first time, you know, the only thing, yeah?

I think that in itself is a huge stuff like, imagine, yeah. So, I mean, the podcast on many stories, so it’s very important. Yeah, one of the things that people don’t realize about the ecosystem that we live in right now. The world that we live in, you know when?

When this land was settled by the Europeans, there were huge Longleaf Pine Forest. So whenever the recurious basically the wire grass, and what have you be the the system in the in the in the environment was a burn environment? In other words, lightning would hit a tree. We’ll catch the Moss on fire.

It would have a big fire, but then it would go for miles and miles and eventually burn stuff out. It would come to a border with a lake or a river and the stock or away, but that provided we, we always think about fires being bad because they’ll burn our houses down in things.

But in nature, it really serves a purpose, and that’s why so many people are you here than talking about getting rid of the live lollies and the slash Pines and putting in the Longleaf Pines. Because the Longleaf Pines are really essential the different, uh, the ecosystem that they support and that fire system, because in the Okie dokie, what happens is, you have some dry weather.

You have lightning strike starts a fire. It opens up and makes the full open Prairie at that point. Then next thing. Now, the trees are opportunist. Okay, humans start coming up. New Cypress start coming up. They grow large again. The whole system starts all over again, and that’s so that that whole system, the problem with the mining, is they drain.

They’ll reusement on million gallons of water per day. That’s going to drop it off for my water table. So when you have this ecosystem happening and you have a fire which will happen? The smoke that we’re going to get in the pollution from all that’s going to be the same.

You know, it’ll be really bad. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So. Um, we’re signed for Georgia. So, thank you very much for being here, um. And thanks to Patrick for organizing. Okay, thank you all learning for. Thanks. We’ll be on Meetup or unsexuality.org. Some Resort is at the end of the month.

Told me about that. We’ve got going on. Uh, next month. There’s gonna be some interesting things. Um, we’re working to start at, and we’re talking about some of the losses from the federal like cuts, and how things are really changing and the ratings were going for science for, uh, Randy Ray, and for services for us.

And we’ll be doing a talk with the. Partnership for science. That was a natural group. And they’re going to be coming in talking about one of their sackers that they have got. So, one of their, uh, left, yeah, yes, uh, it goes in and tells you what has been lost and what is happening.

What brands are being killed? What? Like, all these things in your area, we’ve got used to have something because the federal government funds things seek as long as it gets some measurements and get those get those money. When that money goes away and the federal side, the states don’t increase those all the time because they don’t have to.

So, here, who is those things, even though it was supposed to do it? Um, so there’s a lot of things going on that because they’re talking about business search airports, um, the November election. It’s just important to know what it’s actually. That’s great public.

And so, yeah, and then, this weekend, we’re gonna have plenty title trainings.

Um, and how to deal here? Um, it’s like, you know, and we’re talking about, uh, freedom or administrative education. It’s going to be, um. Is it nature? Chronicling or something like that? So, it’s like skillshare and learning new things, cuz we’re willing to people who are dealing with their websites different things.

What? Not. So, it’s a lot easier. Things like doing nuts through dedication, um? How to start a bartend? How to do small engine repair also depends of solar panels and sort of stuff? So, we’re doing some straight discussions. So, thank you very much. We really appreciate it coming out.

All right. Feel free to get with Mark’s cards. Yeah, so if you go to that website on there, that’s my photographer website. But at the bottom of the page. Just link to the videos that I’ve done also, so you’ll be able to pick that one. That’s right. So, yeah, um, I’m working on this film right now, moving out a guy hired you to do a documentary on Norman sports box.

Oh, another normal shortstop. Um, and on the other side, there’s a website on there, and that’s my full photography website. But at the bottom of the page, you’ll see a lot of videos, and then click on that, and they’ll take the film stuff, and you can watch it. Yeah, it’s a very unusual, um, but see, you know, well, I do all kind of stuff, and I was, like, I.