ML138416
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Wes Skiles. Timecode In: 00:00:04. Timecode out: 00:18:24. Notes: Ginnie Springs, Florida. Habitat: Cave. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Split track. Bob Radcliffe Interviewing Wes Skiles Ginnie Springs, FL August 5, 1993 DAT # 7 BR: Wes long before Florida became a land of tourists and sun worshipers and big cities and retirement communities, orange groves and real estate devel¬opments, there were Indians and Spanish Con¬quistadors and Ponce de Leon always looking for but never finding the the Fountain of Youth. Have you found the Fountain of Youth here in the uh springs of Northern Florida? WES: Certainly my fountain of youth is right here uh these springs make you feel great you know they just really make you feel good when you get in 'em. You can certainly understand how when you part the leaves and the branches of a tree and see one of these crystal clear pools of water how magical of an experience it is. The Indians had a name for a spring Ta-ee-Iee-ya-aha-en and it's it meant in translation where mysterious water wells up from behind the shadow of the hill and always was in love with that description of springs as being magical places. BR: These are supposed to be springs with the purest water perhaps anywhere in the united states I've heard tell. How doe-how does it feel to you when you get in there? WES: Certainly you know there's no purer water in the world than when you're down there inside those caverns and caves swimming through that water the feeling inside the emotion that wells up as you flow through these passages is indescribable it it's more of a primordial feeling that knowing that you're down deep inside the earth and these pure passages of water exploring places that no one's ever been before. BR: How many of these places can you explore how much uh of Northern Florida really is uh over these springs? WES: One of the most difficult questions is to as¬certain how much of these types of passes passages there are. We really don't know. We know from our explorations and mapping that we've been over two hundred miles uh in collective and combined pas¬sageways inside the earth. We feel like there is easily a thousand times more than that to be ex¬plored in conduits tunnels that humans could ac¬tually explore. It's just a difficult process and a dangerous one to to get down there and thorough¬ly explore and map them. BR: Why bother to map these Florida underwater springs and uh waterways? WES: With me it it it's really a fascination for draw¬ing and mapping and and the true form of explora¬tion where I've been. I mean it's a responsibility for people that have never i-if you have never been in a place before it's a responsible-bility of that person to map it and to explore it proper¬ly to bring that information out. Caves are one of the last frontiers on the planet that can actually be explored I mean mountains you can see the tops of them y-you know that they're there. A cave, no one can know what's down there until you physical¬ly go there and map it. And the byproduct of that has been when we started showing the maps to scientists they said wow you know we never really thought this existed you know oh sure it was folk lore that this existed that there were big underground rivers down there but, in reality the scientists didn't know that and I started to discover that I knew something about underground Florida that other people didn't know. So the ef¬fort was to continue to combine all the maps we could and all the information we could from these systems and present that to the scientific com¬munity in hopes that that information would be valuable in regulating development and protecting groundwater resources from s-pollution. BR: How could how could uh ground water sources pollute these springs? WES: Well very easily these these waters are highly vul... (Notes truncated)
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- 6 Jan 2005 - Ben Brotman
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- 6 Jan 2005 - Ben Brotman
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- 6 Jan 2005 - Ben Brotman