JJGrey's frequent trips back to Lochloosa aren't only for sentimental reasons.

The beauty here is unique: 1.5 miles of black, deep creek water curving through swamplands. The water seems to flow at about the same pace as fingernail growth. Such is Cross Creek, capped by Lakes Lochloosa and Orange. Drifting in the canoe, I notice some water collecting around my feet, but the view more than counters my ire at the shoddy patch job. Both lakes are shallow (up to 12 feet) but cover some ground—5,600 and 12,706 acres, respectively. Lochloosa is surrounded by pine, oak, cypress and palm hammocks. In some places hundreds of feet of aquatic vegetation precede the tree line. The creek, so black that the paddle disappears mere inches beneath the surface, serves up memories of quaffing double-malted stout. And the birds...moorhens shuck and jive across the surface without disturbing the herons. Ospreys compete with eagles for the catch of the day while limpkins provide an eerie sound track from opposite directions of the canoe. The duck population is such that I fear my partner Terry Gibson is too busy setting up blinds in his mind to think about fish.

But it is time to fish.

I toss a Muddler-looking fly called a Tarantula, and Terry works a chartreuse standard popper. I watch him quickly peel about 60 feet of line off the reel and stretch three or four beautiful casts. Abruptly, he spins the line back on his reel, says only, “Nope,” and stows the fly rod in the forming puddle under his seat. He thinks for a few seconds, says, “Search bait,” grabs his Beetle Spin-rigged ultralight and proceeds to catch several specks, warmouth, stumpknockers and bluegills, with a smattering of small bass.

Jigging the bonets yielded dozens of panfish, including speckled perch, warmouths, and shellcrackers.

We fish for about two hours and release several panfish. Terry glances back at one of the holes I “patched,” scans to my pruning feet and says to nobody in particular, “Let’s see: no cooler, no stringer, but we do have a canoe with a custom livewell.” Caught up in the tranquility, I manage to refrain from polluting the acoustic environment with a volley of profanities that would make paratroopers blush. A misting rain casually evolves into a drizzle, then a steady rain. Now the canoe fills from both sides, and tactless though the suggestion might be, the 5-inch-deep black water proves to be a very adequate livewell.

It rains pretty much all day. Terry and I spend the day eating, reading, eating, lounging and eating some more. When we find time to kill between those important activities, we eat. The restaurant at our cabin, The Yearling, is documented to have some of the best cracker-style food in the state. The recipes date back to when Marjorie Rawlings lived on the creek and wrote her prize-winning novel of the same name. The crawfish po-boy served with grits, greens and oversized hushpuppies would make any city-slicker kick off his shoes and swear he was a cracka.

Florida

JJ Grey, lead singer/songwriter for the bluesy Florida rock band Mofro, and his cousin Tim Padgette arrive early the next morning. Tim has his skiff (which unlike my canoe has no holes in the hull) and we are ready to explore the lake. JJ is the reason we are here—when I hear his music I know he is “one of us,” and his recent CD titled Lochloosa does justice to the lake.

Speckled perch were cracker's primary source of income.

They arrive under cloudy skies, and after howdys we jump into the boat. Terry, Tim and I make “stranger” small talk when I notice JJ standing alone in the bow, beholding the creek’s tallest cypress. I can’t help thinking of lyrics from one of his songs: Florida I know you’re out there hidin’ from me/You get harder and harder to find/Every day she keeps slippin’ away/Florida please don’t fade on me now.

Discussing the scenery with JJ is unavoidable, but almost painful because of the changes time is making to this simple but deep place. “Kids today, I feel for them,” JJ later comments. “What do they have to talk about? Video games and TV shows? Nobody seems to care about places like this anymore. The fun we used to have with my granddaddy was wild. Spending time here with him, catching panfish and catfish, opened the door to new worlds. Real conversations, sparked by imagination and curiosity, came easy. Kids don’t know about those things anymore.” Words like that strike me and I see my own children: too young for kindergarten but content to stretch their bellies across my dock and watch bream scare mosquitofish away from bread balls that drop in the water. JJ is right. More kids need that.