Rifle Range Road

 Rifle Range Road

I’ve seen many changes over the years to the Osceola National Forest Rifle Range Road, so named for the Lewis Whittaker gun range the Game Commission maintains. It once was a narrow sandy road with a thick canopy of trees. We would meet at the Moose Lodge parking lot on Watertown Lake every afternoon to make the usual six mile run out to Still Road, or to the second cattle gap and back. Sometimes we would go longer, depending on the season. In those days, free range cows were kept in the forest by the cattle gaps. The piney wood cows were not intimidated and often they refused to yield the road, as we skirted around in the tick waiting palmettos.

This was the road I once ran past the parked pest control truck, not realizing the weight lifter Steve had just committed suicide inside it. It was the starting point of many long mountain bike rides with my late friend Roger. It was the place Judy, Nancy and I rode in her old pickup in her ardent environmentalism up to Impassable Bay in search of red-cockaded woodpecker nests. It was the sand where we could tell by the shoe prints, who had come before us; Joe with the one Nike shoe sliding with the miniature collie prints beside him, the Adidas of Buddy, the Saucony of Russell, the Gatorskins of Rick and Ben. The road where I found the arrow point, running the last mile whooping as Jumper with Osceola. The road I now drive slowly in search of Monarchs and Bald Eagles, maybe a buck or even a Canebrake. 

I miss the slow sand ruts, not so much picking gallberry switches, to run and keep off our backs the yellow and deer fly gauntlet of summer. I miss the shaded canopy, the wide packed limestone road now a white cloud covering everything with each passing pickup. Most of all I miss the meeting of so many friends, the many miles spent riding, running, walking and biking this ever developing road into the forest of never forgotten.