You may not know the name Kurt Zuelsdorf, but he’s one of the main reasons Clam Bayou is a pleasant place to paddle. Let’s meet him. 
Photo by Cathy Salustri

​It’s a surprisingly mild June weekday morning when I met with Kurt Zuelsdorf, the founder of Kayak Nature Adventures. Here in front of me is a man with a trash picker and bucket, sweat-wicking clothes and a sun hat. We must walk and talk, picking up trash along the way. It seems most of our conversation centers around the history of trash and its abatement in Clam Bayou.
Yet our topic really isn’t about trash at all. For the whole of it, we’re talking about tending to and protecting the natural environment around us. I’ve met someone with an abiding love and respect for nature and specifically, Clam Bayou. So, on we walk, with no piece of garbage too small to pick up.

Kurt Zuelsdorf
Zuelsdorf has spent most of his life as a nature guide, beginning at age 9, taught by his naturalist father on the Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin. He began guiding visitors through the history of the marsh, pointing out waterways and habitats living harmoniously, and showing visitors how to enter that harmony and appreciate the complexity and balance. 
“In nature’s embrace, we uncover a bond that speaks to our soul, untamed and eternal, teaching us to live in harmony and wonder,” Zuelsdorf says.

Having settled into the friendly Gulfport community and beginning a family in the late ’80s, he noticed the trash and neglect around and within the waterways of Clam Bayou.

What’s it like to kayak on Clam Bayou and Boca Ciega Bay?
We tried it (https://thegabber.com/we-tried-it-kayaking-boca-ciega-bay/).

“I was shocked at what I saw in this natural area,” he says with a look of distaste, gesturing broadly toward the area around us. “It wasn’t a nature preserve at all. This park was a dump and the bird life suffered and wildlife habitats were trying to survive among all this trash. You couldn’t even see water, there was so much trash congregating in this bayou.”

This energy provoked his journey of stewardship and advocacy for the Clam Bayou. Inspired, he provided solutions, such as securing grants for the cleanup, and delivering education promoting clean waterways. Simultaneously, he worked with City officials to stem the flow of trash.
Kayak Nature Adventures
In 2003, Zuelsdorf began Kayak Nature Adventures. By 2013, he was leasing kayaks at the Gulfport Municipal Marina. He offered free kayak rentals to kayakers who collected trash on the paddle. In time, these kayakers pulled in 200 tons of every sort of debris from the waters and mangroves. Throughout the last 23 years, the ups and downs of business occurred as they do in most small businesses. 
There were years with the bayou filled with kayakers and months where business was closed or slow due to water quality issues (https://thegabber.com/the-aftermath-of-the-poonami/), yet through the ups and downs, Zuelsdorf remained true to his stewardship.

Several buckets of trash later, we return to his kayak rig. He meets customers ready to commence a four-hour adventure. Zuelsdorf offers instructions, the map — did they watch the video? Intertwined in those practicals are instructions about wildlife, what people have seen recently in the water, and how to get help.
When he returns to me, I ask about his plans for retirement.
“What am I going to retire from?” he replies. This is a person, who in his drive to protect nature, has architected his life to do so.
Kurt Zuelsdorf is one of the pearls among us, Gulfport.

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• #ClamBayouCleanup
• #KayakNatureAdventures
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• #NatureLover
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• #BocaCiegaBay
• #TrashFreeNature

VOICES IN TONGUE 
By Kuty Z

A few minutes ago, every tree was alive, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious worship. John Muir wrote of their fervor, and though to the outer ear these trees now stand silent, their songs never cease.

Modern flip-flops plop and slap down the brick streets of Cedar Key’s old town, each step stirring subtle voices. Pausing to touch a rough stone wall built by elders, I hear them there too. On the porches of weathered homes—tilting sharply, paint peeling—a cat lounges in an old cedar rocking chair, and I hear them still. But it was the sight of children’s deer hide shoes, fragile remnants of the 1852 hurricane, that made the voices louder. In the cemetery, where warm cedar plank headstones have long been replaced by cold marble, woodsmen, carvers, and fishermen rest side by side on a hill overlooking a sea of grassy wilderness. Whitman “The Shell Man” lies here too, his vast collection of artifacts—some arrowheads and spear tips dated to 20,000 years old—whispering of ancient lives. Shhhhh. Their spirits linger, mingling above clamshell coffins, speaking in native tongues through time and breeze. Following their voices, I pass through shadows guiding me deeper into Cedar Key’s history.
Brilliant white egret plumes flash along the canopy over the abandoned railroad built by Faber in 1855. The chug of his locomotive is gone, but I hear them. Images rise of Timucuan natives piling oyster, conch, mussel, and green turtle shells into a mound towering 28 feet above the mudflats—a monument 6,000 years in the making. Standing atop this palm- and cedar-crowned relic, I wonder aloud, “Why here? Why this spot, so remote, plagued by biting deer flies?” The cooling summer breeze carries my questions but offers no answers—only the laughter of children running through marsh grass, flushing scores of egret and ibis into the timeless sky. I hear them.
On the centerline of Highway 24, I bond with a swallowtail kite, and we both hear them. I long to see this landscape through the natives’ eyes. John Muir, on his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf in 1867, heard them too. “The traces of war,” he wrote, “mark not only the broken fields, mills, and slaughtered woods but the countenances of the people.” Ancestors of great cedar trees still twist in the breeze, dropping scented blue seeds to the rich earth. “Savaged,” Muir called this land—vine-tangled, watery, unfinished. 
Kayaking to Seahorse Key and its lighthouse from my condo feels civilized, but civilization seems unwelcome here. Not the hum of electricity, nor airboats, golf carts, restaurants, or tour boats belong. Remnants of history endure: giant cast-iron pots once used for salt, rusted hulls of old clam boats littering the rugged shore. I wouldn’t mourn the loss of the western pier or the “Guest House,” crumbling with each tidal shift, like the modern locals who come and go.
“Atsena Otie,” from the Muscogean “acheno ota”—Cedar Island—are the only Native American words I speak and understand. I may not return to this place of cloudy water and clams, but I’ll never forget what I heard.

• #CedarKey
• #FloridaHistory
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• #WildFlorida 
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• #NaturePoetry 
• #NatureLovers #History #TravelUSA  #CedarKey #FloridaHistory,  #EcoTravel2025 #HiddenFlorida