EDITORIALS PUBLISHED IN THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION

Thursday, February 21, 1985
Godspeed to the adventurers on Maple Leaf's watery trail

    Each day brings living proof of  G. K. Chesterton's insight contained in the statement that the world will never be at a loss for lack of wonders, only for a lack of wonder.
    The days of Marco Polo following the Silk Road to Cathay or even Henry Morton Stanley's quest through places in Africa previously unknown to the Western world have given way to the airplane, the television camera and the prying satellite. But wonder abounds. And so does the opportunity for adventure.
    Some still seek that wonder in the remote places, the icy wastelands or islands off the beaten track. Others look forward to following the astronauts into the vastness of space with all the mystery that remains there despite the probes and the telescopes.
    Those are exotic adventures to most of us who are tied down in the to-and-fro on the expressways and the need to earn a living. However, even for this vast majority, adventure is as available as the mind is inventive.
    Francis Thompson's oft-repeated promise of the sublime in the everyday world can also be applied to the romance of adventure that exists largely unseen in seemingly prosaic evirons.

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soar!
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and starta wing!
'Tis ye, tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many - splendoured thing.

    Exploration in the back yard into the behavior of birds and insects, into the growth of plants, is a marvelous source of wonder, even for the jaded senses of those who feel they have experienced just about everything. A microscope can bring otherwise indiscernible wonders on stage before our eyes.
    A more-ambitious, but still a sort of "neighborhood" possibility for adventure is the attempted salvage of the Maple Leaf, a troop transport during the Civil War, that sank in the St. Johns River off Mandarin.
    It is a 121-year-old challenge, in its own way as exciting in prospect as the distant possibilities.
    The challenge has been there all of these years while adventurers from the area have gone to distant corners of the Earth to satisfy their craving to confront the unknown.
    Now a group of Jacksonville residents has decided to take up that challenge and explore what is left of the ship and the possessions of those who sailed upon it, secrets as remote for more than a century as those of any unexplored region.
    It is a gamble. No telling what difficulties, expenses and disappointments await the would-be salvors. But, if it was easy, it wouldn't be a challenge.
    The effort is more than a personal adventure. It is a community or even an area adventure. Jacksonville's history is rich in will-o-the wisps that left only memories, without artifacts, of their existence.
    There is a growing craving discernible in the area not only to know more about what went before but to have that knowledge ac companied by reminders that can be seen and touched.
    Perhaps this attempt at salvage will bring out of the mud and silt of the dark river's bottom a little more of the rare physical evidence of a rich history that was largely written in wood and has either gone up in flames or been eaten by termites or torpedo worms.
    We wish the adventurers bon voyage!