Florida Hills

Despite being sick with the flu I've continued my daily walks through our area as part of my recovery therapy. I can now take on the steepest of the hills with relative ease. One doesn't often expect to find such steep hills in Florida. Our neighborhood is built atop an ancient sand due that was once ocean front property. Geologists refer to this area as the Pleistocene Cypresshead Formation (read more on this formation below).

ABOVE: One of the steepest hills. BELOW: A more gradual incline.



BELOW: I've made a path about 2.5 miles long through these hills. At the bottom of this hill is a swamp.



BELOW: In the swamp I always see this old Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). He's in the same spot every afternoon.



BELOW: I see a lot of rabbits. I like their very white little puff ball tails. This guy is the Eastern Cottontail Rabbit. (Sylvilagus floridanus).



BELOW: Power lines top each ridge. Here, looking north, the power lines stretch for miles down the steepest of the hills. I cannot walk under the lines despite the apparent path because periodically neighboring property owners have fenced off the land beneath the lines. This I learned the hard way when I had to turn around and back track.





ABOVE and BELOW: When I get to this last hill I know I'm almost home. Below, the house is more hidden than it once was as the trees fill in around the fence built in 2007.



My therapy walk takes about 45 minutes today. That's if I don't stop talking to neighbors. The idea is to get my heart beating at a good steady rate and keeping that rate up for 45 minutes.

Read more about the geologic formation we live atop:

The Pleistocene refers to the geologic epoch from 2.588 million to 12,000 years before present.

The Cypresshead Formation named by Huddlestun (1988), is composed of siliciclastics and occurs only in the Florida peninsula and eastern Georgia. It is at or near the surface from northern Nassau County southward to Highlands County forming the peninsular highlands. It appears that the Cypresshead Formation occurs in the subsurface southward from the outcrop region and similar sediments, the Long Key Formation, underlie the Florida Keys. The Cypresshead Formation is a shallow marine, near shore deposit equivalent to the Citronelle Formation deltaic sediments and the Miccosukee Formation prodeltaic sediments.

The Cypresshead Formation consists of reddish brown to reddish orange, unconsolidated to poorly consolidated, fine to very coarse grained, clean to clayey sands. Cross bedded sands are common within the formation. Discoid quartzite pebbles and mica are often present. Clay beds are scattered and not areally extensive. In general, the Cypresshead Formation in exposure occurs above 100 feet (30 meters) above mean sea level (msl).

Original fossil material is not present in the sediments although poorly preserved molds and casts of mollusks and burrow structures are occasionally present. The presence of these fossil "ghosts" and trace fossils documents marine influence on deposition of the Cypresshead sediments.

The permeable sands of the Cypresshead Formation form part of the surficial aquifer system