Moods of St. Lucie River Always Changing, Better or Worse | Ernest Lyons column
This column first appeared in the Stuart News Dec. 3, 1970. It was republished Aug. 18, 2013.
Water is just water, of course, and to say that a river like the St. Lucie has moods may be stretching the imagination. But it seems so to me.
I remember mornings with a light breeze rippling the surface, the first breeze of the day, with sunlight reflecting diamonds in the wavelets, happy morning and a happy river.
And angry cold days with a blue Norther whistling, when, try as you might to find a lee, there was no way to steer a boat up the North Fork bay without being drenched. The river seemed just plain savage and mean as it sloshed you again and again with buckets of chilly water.
Soft summer days that began with the river smooth as glass at dawn with big snook and tarpon charging schools of mullet — and you fished hard the first couple of hours to get away from a hot humid river that would be unbearable by midday.
The MAGICAL RIVER by night, back in those times when there was a phosphorescent luminescence in our brackish waters and billions of tiny creatures glowed for an instant when the water was disturbed by a boat’s propeller or a pair of oars. A trail of light marked your wake — tiny little specks of light — and glowed wherever one fish rushed off to escape another. Overhead was a mantle of stars and alongside you in the river myriad tiny light-emitting creatures which to me seemed equally mysterious.
The SAD RIVER, which seemed to say, “Look what men have done to me. I am dying,” back when the muddy marlish goo from St. Lucie Canal was first unleashed into it for months after the hurricane of ’33. And again in the ’50s and again and again.
The BRAVE RIVER, which has made comeback after comeback from all we have done to it, and never stops trying although its recovery is always a little less than it was before.
The POISONED RIVER, which has turned a ghastly green three or four times in the past couple of years with algae blooms because of too much enrichment.
THE RIVER, which has always changed and is always changing, which was freshwater with lilypads and manatee grass and big black bass most of the way downstream until early settlers reopened St. Lucie Inlet. It has been a highway in and out of the sea and deep into the headwaters for an incalculable stream of life, and it will continue to be only if we can clean it up and keep it clean.
Water is only water, but water can be wonderful, a happy part of happy lives, only if you don’t mix mud and pesticides and chemicals and blue-green algae with it — after which it becomes a problem and the river’s mood becomes despair.
What men do they can undo, and the hope for our river is in the hundreds of men and women in our communities who are resolved to save the St. Lucie. It may be too soon for the river to have a mood of confidence, but it is not too soon to hope.
The late Ernest F. Lyons, longtime editor of the Stuart News, was a champion of the St. Lucie River.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Moods of St. Lucie River Always Changing, Better or Worse | Ernie Lyons
