On Useppa

"Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin."
     – Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea






The ten thousand islands were but a hundred in reality, but as you navigated them yourself, in among the mangrove inlets, past the hundreds of dune beaches, it felt as though you might very well be at all times floating just above land.  This was because the ten thousand islands used to be the continent land of Florida in ancient times.  Sea levels had risen and turned land to islands, floating mangroves, mere tufts of sand four feet deep where now the catfish, pinfish, pigfish, rays, sharks,

oysters, whelks, conchs, and clams thrived in the slow beating churn of the milky blue waters.  Here we can see the huts of ancient natives spred along the upper coastline.  A young boy might be handed

the curved and safe bottom of a whelk axe, ground down to a sharp edge over time by the tribal craftsman, digging out the center line of a recently upturned stump for a canoe to fish or hop islands.  The natives leave quahog clam-shell anvils; chert tools; hammers, buried burned wood, and later, A.D. 500-800, Belle Glade pottery showing sophisticated manufacturing and communication among tribes.