Getting real

Author: By Helen Hu, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, August 18, 1996

Page: M1

Section: Travel

For a taste of the ``real Florida,'' blessed by rugged, benign beauty, a slower pace and an appreciation for history, do what many Floridians do -- head for the northern part of the state.

They relish the graceful architecture and historic sites in St. Augustine, the hiking trails and springs of the Ocala National Forest and other wilderness areas, and the uncrowded, sunbleached fishing village of Cedar Key.

This is not the place to go for hip discotheques, sophisticated cuisine or world-class art museums. Instead, the region, rich in wildlife, waterways and trees draped with Spanish moss, has a disarming innocence. It can be tacky in an old-fashioned way. In its own way, it can be mesmerizing.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, a New York journalist who moved to the tiny community of Cross Creek in 1928 and started up an orange grove, fell in love with the area's primal mysteriousness, naturalness and unpretentiousness, which have survived to this day.

For the fans of North Florida, Rawlings' testimonial about Cross Creek rings true of the area in general: ``For myself, the Creek satisfies a thing that had gone hungry and unfed since childhood days.''

For me, a recent homecoming -- I lived in north Florida for five years -- started with a visit to St. Augustine, a small, charming city on the east coast, south of Jacksonville.

A sort of low-key cross between New Orleans and San Antonio, the city has honored and preserved its Spanish roots and is ideal for a leisurely stroll.

The historic district, full of coquina buildings with second-floor balconies, offers exhibits of life during the Spanish occupations of 1565-1763 and 1783-1819 and of British rule during the 20 years in between.

Visitors can take in a schoolhouse built in the 1780s of cedar, cypress and oyster-shell concrete floor, and the Spanish Quarter Museum.

The museum, a re-created 18th-century Spanish Colonial community, features craftsmen in period costumes giving short talks on woodworking and ironworking and clothmaking, and guided tours of a dignified home with furnishings from the days when Florida was an American territory.

The district also has a shop selling fragrant handmade cigars, and boutiques selling everything from leather goods to T-shirts. I always stop at the bakery of the famed Columbia Restaurant to get black bean soup or a guava turnover to go, and eat in a nearby courtyard.

Other stops are the Castillo de San Marcos, a shellrock fortress built by the Spaniards in 1695 that looks out on the St. Augustine Inlet, and two magnificent relics of the influence of Henry M. Flagler, the railroad baron who wanted to turn Florida into another Riviera.

He built the Ponce de Leon Hotel, which now houses Flagler College, with soaring turrets and a posh interior of mosaics and Tiffany windows. Across the street stands the former Hotel Alcazar, which shelters both City Hall and the Lightner Museum, a collection of 19th-century objects including costumes, crystal and embroidery samples.

Satiated by history, the visitor can head for Potter's Wax Museum, Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Museum, the Alligator Farm or the beach.

Or, driving west might be just the ticket. Passing through some small towns, one heads into the region around Gainesville, home of the University of Florida, and Ocala, a city noted for horse farms.

The area has trails for hiking and horseback riding, and lakes, springs and rivers for swimming, fishing and boating.

Paynes Prairie, a state preserve south of Gainesville with a mix of pine woods, savannah and swamp, is a refreshing, informative stop. There are hiking trails and a small center that shows exhibits and slides of the cranes, otters, alligators and other animals that thrive in the preserve.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' home in nearby Cross Creek gives hints of the writer's life in ``cracker'' Florida, characterized by back-breaking labor, domination by nature and earthy, sometimes humorous interactions with her plain-spoken neighbors.

Rawlings, best known for her novel ``The Yearling,'' cherished her small house in all its humbleness, nestled, as it is today, among orange and grapefruit trees. The house, which was to reopen to tourists in March following renovations, has ducks, chickens, cats and a garage that houses her 1940 Oldsmobile.

She tried to explain her love for the place. ``It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway, to step inside the rusty gate and close it behind,'' she wrote in 1942.

``One is now inside the orange grove, out of one world and in the mysterious heart of another. . . . And after long years of spiritual homelessness, or nostalgia, here is that mystic loveliness of childhood again. Here is home.''

Southeast of Cross Creek, the Ocala National Forest is a little-known delight, a huge expanse of wilderness dotted with some development.

Covering 430,000 acres of swamps, springs and ponds, and crossed by more than a thousand miles of roads, the forest is home to the sandhill crane, bald eagle and black bear, species that are rare throughout much of Florida.

Favorite pastimes in the forest include camping, picnicking, canoeing down Juniper Creek and swimming in clear, spring-fed pools. The Florida National Scenic Trail, which traverses much of Florida and runs through the forest, is a pleasant walk.

Simply driving the back roads of the forest can be enthralling for visitors as they go through miles of wide-open fields that seem more like Africa than the Florida one knows.

Heading farther west, as I did, through the wilds of Levy County, one encounters yet another treat, Cedar Key, a town on the west coast.

Once a key shipping point for the Confederacy, Cedar Key has been harvested at various times in its history for cedar for pencils, palmetto fiber for brooms, and green turtle meat for gourmets.

Today, a chief resource is tourism, but not on a grand scale. There are a few restaurants, some specializing in the seafood of the area, which includes oysters and mullet.

Shops, bars and hotels in the small historic district are low key, housed in funky old wooden structures. The Cedar Key Museum, which details the area's history, can be seen in less than an hour.

The streets are crowded during the annual arts festival. But anyone looking for excitement probably ought to go elsewhere.

Don Joyce, a local merchant and maker of stained glass, recalls a Tampa woman who stopped in his shop, at the end of her tether, desperate for a rest.

``People come here to break away -- relax and get away from the hustle and bustle of big cities,'' he said. ``It's like Key West was, years ago.''

That pretty much sums up this neck of the woods. It lacks the manmade attractions that seem to be a staple of Florida tourism. But it offers a lot for those eager to explore the Florida behind the mouse ears and travel packages.

For more information on the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings House, call (904) 466-3672. For a Florida information kit, call (904) 487-1462.