To celebrate our $75,000 grant from the Florida Division of Historical Resources, Friends will hold a Photo Walk at Vista on Friday December 9 from 2:00 to 4:00. The area is closed except during special events such as this one.

We will gather at the River Trail parking area, near Refuge headquarters, off County Road 347 about 1:45. At 2:00, we will walk to the Vista property.

It is a lovely nature walk, even if you don't want to take photos. However, we proclaimed this event as a Photo Walk because, as restoration begins, changes will happen. Some trees need to be removed. Old buildings with no historical value will come down. This is a last chance for photos before any changes commence.

Board members will be at each building to chat about the property and assure that no one enters the buildings, which are not safe for visitors.

There are no restroom facilities in this area. The restoration will need to address that issue.

It will take years and lots more grant funding and philanthropic support to make the area safe and welcoming for visitors. Still, we are enjoying the chance to celebrate each step of the way.

Join us on the Photo Walk. If you get some great pics, we would greatly appreciate your sharing them with Friends and the Refuge.

Friends has a list of items we fund each year and items we plan to fund when we have the income to do so. If you are considering making an end-of-year gift to Friends, you could be a part of one of these Friends projects becoming a reality.

Particularly high on the Wish List right now is funding for the iGuide panels. They are ready to go to the printer but cost more than our print budget can afford. They would be rigid, outdoor panels to be placed at the entrances to roads, and also at libraries and visitor centers around the region, increasing access to information for visitors and saving both money and paper.

Friends' Online Store's year-end sale features the luna, butterfly and women's tree shirts.

It also has some fun gift-idea items to consider. Take, for example, our earrings. They are made in America, actually in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, by a family of nature enthusiasts. There also is a Florida connection . . . earring artist and co-owner Kevin Abbott has a Wildlife Ecology degree from the University of Florida.

The nature-themed earrings are made of re-cycled, locally-sourced cereal boxes. We select sets that are appropriate to our part of Florida, such as roseate spoonbills, dolphins, box turtles, white pelicans, luna moths, swallow-tailed kites, red mangroves, and spicebush swallowtail butterflies. Most sets have different versions of the plant or animal for each ear. They are a charming $15 gift.

In 2022, we added a long-sleeved hooded shirt with trees specific to the Lower Suwannee Refuge and a short-sleeved shirt with an animals-at-sunset  design.

If you're looking for an alternative gift, the online store now has an option for you to make a gift to Friends "in appreciation of", or "in the name of" a nature-lover, especially one who cares about the Lower Suwannee and Cedar Keys Refuges. Donate any amount to Friends and we'll send a card with a refuge photo and a short message of your choice hand-written by one of us inside.

All the purchases help Friends print brochures, maps, and trail guides; host the Annual Meeting (on the last Saturday in February); pay for the website platform and software; and sponsor our other activities. Purchases are an important revenue stream for Friends and your shopping with Friends is greatly appreciated.

Hopefully, at 5:39 we will see the sun set near Palmetto Mound, which was an ancient burial ground. Each of the past 5 years, the weather has been cold and blustery. Each of those years, we had to imagine the sun setting behind the clouds we were watching. Nevertheless, we celebrated.

Be there, rain or shine. It is becoming a Friends' tradition.

If you are thinking about an end-of-year or future gift to Friends, consider making a donation to help with our matching fund commitment that will help leverage the grant for work at Vista.

By way of update, the November News Brief mentioned that the grant had met a bump in the road. Because of the recent hurricanes in our state, architects and contractors are harder to hire and more costly than our proposal projected when we submitted it in summer 2021. With Refuge Manager Andrew Gude, Friends continues working on ways to move ahead in the new fiscal reality.