A little follow-up to the 2nd leg of my last trailer trip. We had a cold front move in Sunday, and it looked to be a bad day for being on the water, so opted to take a hike up the beach trail. See if I can reverse engineer finding a pass from the lagoon to the beach from the land. From the parking area to the most likely cut-through, that I haven’t paddled to yet, was a little over 4 miles on the map. But looked like there was a clear trail, just on the lagoon side of the dune, so do-able. Flat, straight, should be smooth sailing. I packed up a backpack with some provisions and got there early.
If you ever mention Playalinda to someone from around here, you’ll inevitably get a giggle and something said about nudity. The reason being the area just north of the last parking area has traditionally been the nude beach, or clothing optional beach if you want to be adult about it. I, like most everyone else that giggles about it, had never been there. This trip though, I had to hike through it. Well, the rumors are true. Even at 7:30am there were quite a few people out there, and I mean OUT there. And it’s never the folks you’d like to see at a nude beach, kinda looked like…pigs on the beach. So after seeing more dongs than a YMCA locker room, I pressed on North, up the beach, into the back country hoping to find a way onto what looked like an inland trail.
Try as I might, there just wasn’t any trail there. Clear as a bell on the map, but looked pretty impenetrable to me. And you have to cross the dune and there’s sign’s everywhere about staying off the damn dune, area closed! I might be missing something here. Will ask the guard at the gate about it next time. So I just kept hiking up the beach. Kind of tough on the ankles and knees, but I was there so figured I’d press on until I wanted to turn back. It was real windy, but overcast and cool, so still a good day for hiking…in Florida. The wind was blowing the salt spray onshore, so a hazy mist cut down the visibility.
After I while I can see some big black thing on the beach, maybe a half mile or so away. Like any Floridian I instantly think, big bag of drugs that washed up onshore, or a“square grouper” in the local vernacular. As I get a little closer, it gets up and starts moving around, on all fours. So my next thought is black bear, it looked about that size, big. Which would be odd, it’s a thin spit of land, hardly seems like bear country. But as I get closer and can make out its profile, it’s a pig. A pig as big as a fucking bear. On the damn beach. Just lying there. After rubbing my eyes and getting over the oddity of it, I remember that feral pigs are extremely dangerous. By many counts, the most dangerous wildlife to humans in Florida, which is saying something. They can be vicious, and grow to enormous size. This one was state fair blue ribbon material. A hoss. The beach isn’t very wide, I wasn’t even going to be able to squeeze by this thing. I move down near the water in case I need to escape and slow may pace. When I’m maybe a quarter mile away, it goes up into the vegetation on the dune and disappears. I keep moving forward, watching where it went in, hoping I had scared it off, or it just moved on. Then it pops back out, maybe 50yds away, and was staring me down. I stop, this thing does not look scared, more like he was sizing me up, and is solely focused on me. I had a machete and a pistol, but both would have been utterly useless against this monster. I turn on my heels and start hiking back, quickly, looking back often until the pig had focused his attention elsewhere. Glad I didn’t have to escape to the water. Not sure if pigs can swim, but doubt they surf.
Aaron