Destination: Florida : Near Disney World, Ocala National Forest often causes visitors to wonder how any place so big and so beautiful remains so little known

We are out of the motel and moving before 7 a.m., driving east in November fog--out to where Silver Springs Boulevard becomes simply Florida State Road 40. Swooping up across the big steel bridge over the Oklawaha River, we turn left on Highway 314, skirting the vapor-tinged villages of Turkey Landing and Grahamsville, running along the edge of the Ocala National Forest.

Houses on patches of private land--some of them shacks, others trim enough--lurk far back from the road, their wide, deep, mostly unmowed front yards marked by azalea bushes, bass and gator boats, house trailers, rusty Jeeps and rough signs advertising fishing bait and truck repair.

Almost imperceptibly, we enter the forest preserve itself--430,000 acres of prime, north-central Florida real estate dotted with springs, trails, all-year campgrounds, sinkholes and the largest stand of sand pines in the world. Established by order of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, it’s the oldest national forest east of the Mississippi River, the southernmost in the nation.

Among guidebook-packing travelers on the Yankeeland-to-Disney World funnel down Interstates 75 and 95, the forest is scandalously--nature connoisseurs might say fortunately--overlooked. With not a chain motel, factory outlet store nor fast-food stand to boast of, it’s a haven for conservationists, backpackers and lumberjacks alike.

On our way from Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale for a wedding, we have but a single day to spend in the park. So we hurry along--past family and youth camps at Fore Lake and Lake Eaton, using a full-color U.S. Forest Service map I had ordered by mail, searching for unpaved forest road 86. We find it after doubling back twice--because the cutoff is marked NE 172 Av. Rd, following Marion County, not national forest, nomenclature.

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We get deep in the woods fast. Rows of tall, managed sand pines on each side of the car grow right to the edge of the scraped, yellow-sand track. After a mile or so, we wave at a trio of camo-clad hunters with their truck of caged, long-eared dogs. They wave back, friendly-like.

We turn onto another scraped road, then halt at signs announcing the Lake Eaton Sinkhole Trail. Inside two minutes, we plunge into the forest on foot, down a clearly marked but unfussy half-mile path, passing oaks, deer moss, cawing scrub jays and woodpeckers.

The dry sinkhole--like other sinks, lakes and springs dotting Central Florida--is a result of water erosion in subterranean limestone caverns. The ceilings of compromised caves eventually collapse--so we read on one of the markers. But most soon fill with water. At 450 feet across and located in high ridge country, the Lake Eaton dry hole is a rarity.

A boardwalk and stairs lead down into the 80-foot-deep sink with its deep-forest ecosystem of broadleaf magnolias, live oak, pignut hickory, loblolly pine and sabal palm.

Insects are also part of the system, even in late November. Returning to the car on another half-mile trail--through a managed stand of pines planted in 1983--we slap gnats and mosquitoes, regretting that the repellent spray stayed in Atlanta. This is what natives call “Old Florida” . . . with a vengeance.

After sand pines, the most notable feature of Ocala National Forest is its numerous natural springs. Salt Springs Recreation Area, 10 miles northeast of the Lake Eaton Sinkhole--like the privately managed Silver Springs outside the national forest--has operated as a tourist attraction for more than a century. A resort hotel once flourished there (the building stands just to the south of the parking lot). Author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (“The Yearling,” “Cross Creek”) used to spend time in a juke joint nearby. In fact, business was so good that the 10,000-acre Salt Springs tract wasn’t added to the national forest until the 1960s--at a cost over $12 million.

Despite the name, the water is fresh. And the place is a magnet still. In late morning, we watch an extended family emerge from a three-axle camper and a battered Camaro. As we slip our $2.25 day-use fees through a slot at the shuttered gatehouse, we overhear the elders loudly convincing each other that payment is unnecessary in winter--though a sign clearly states otherwise.

The spring is worth whatever it takes. A concrete path leads to a walled-at-one-end semi-tropical pool surrounded by live oaks and palmettos. From the edge--through water transparent as cellophane--we gaze down past hovering largemouth bass, bream and mullet into deep, rock-lined holes. Clear, clean water flows up from what are called boils at a rate of 52 million gallons a day. The temperature is a constant 72 degrees. The “salts” in this lightly mineralized water include sodium, potassium, silica and magnesium.

There is camping and, in season, swimming. At the open end of the spring-fed pool, paths skirt a fishing area and marina. Beyond is the run, or open creek, to Lake George.

Though craving to stay, we quickly snap pictures and move on to Salt Springs visitors center, one of three in the forest. Maps, brochures, books and interpretive displays (the P.C. term for stuffed wildlife) are standard, as are crusty rangers, many of them female, and volunteer interpreters, most elderly natives of the area.

While buying raw honey and dark cane syrup as edible souvenirs, we chat with the staff and pore over maps and pamphlets, planning the afternoon.

It’s hard to choose. The Florida National Scenic Trail passes nearby--67 marked miles, about 50 ponds, numerous stands of forest and plenty of campsites that are part of what’s intended as a 1,000-mile scenic path running from the state’s Panhandle to the Keys.

We’ve done our mile. Nor can we partake of horseback rides, rental boats, nature lectures or rec-vee electrical hookups.

At the nearby Salt Spring Seafood Restaurant, we check out fried catfish, broiled snapper, hush puppies, sweet tea and slaw. Catering to hunters and outdoors folks, the restaurant’s menu offers local fare such as frog legs, turtle and alligator.

Turning south again, we pass former town sites such as Pat’s Island. Author Rawlings used one local family’s experiences as the basis of “The Yearling,” her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that subsequently became two movies. Pat’s Island was later leveled when the U.S. Department of Agriculture took over the land. Today, the Forest Service provides public recreation and timber in what seems like equal measure.

Following the recommendation of forest ranger Patricia Draheim, we check out Silver Glen Springs, a spot she described, with a catch in her throat, as “one of the prettiest places on this planet.”

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Make it two planets. Silver Glen, ringed by cedars, Spanish-moss-infested oaks and tall palmetto trees, is archetypal, picture-postcard stuff. A two-acre circular pond opens out onto its larger mate. Near the bank, turtles sun themselves on fallen tree trunks. Coots hoot. A young blue heron finds lunch among the water plants. And--just beneath the surface of the water under clear gray skies--bass and fat mullet cruise atop a series of big blue boils that open down, down into rich, slightly sinister, unseen springs.

Only one other couple is there--the equivalent, in today’s overpopulated Sunshine State--of desert island life.

Consulting the map in a happy haze of overstimulation, we pick out Alexander Springs as the next destination on blind impulse. Heading south again, then east, then south--on surprisingly good blacktopped roads--I yammer that nothing, nowhere can top Silver Glen as the earth’s prettiest spot.

But Alexander Springs beats the whole solar system. This relatively small, dark pool lies hidden in dense forest, tightly ringed with towering oaks, cypress, cedar, sweet gum and palmetto. Near a modest beach, old people and young swim and splash (scuba and snorkeling are possible) in what amounts to a flashback of Ponce de Leon’s dreamy Fountain of Youth.

Beyond the changing rooms and concession stand, a series of paths and boardwalks parallels a run through deep forest. Signs along the way explain and identify forest products that sustained native Americans, including wild grapes, coontie (Indian arrowroot), hickory nuts and fine, blue-gray clay that was used to make ceramic cooking pots.

My camera’s light meter reminds us of Pat Draheim’s warning: that no visitor can begin to see the national forest in a day. So we compromise: We’ll hit the park early the next morning, move fast and arrive in Lauderdale on the late side.

We decide not to chance the return to the motel over a long dirt road through the famous Big Scrub area. Safely skirting the forest instead pays off like Lotto when we pass a flock of five sandhill cranes cavorting in a new-mown hay field on the southern edge of the blacktop. We spend the night in a Holiday Inn smack across the road from Silver Springs--the latter costs $20 per person, per well-scripted, heavily promoted visit.

Next morning at 8 a.m.--more fog and gray sky--we greet the ranger at the gate to Juniper Springs Recreation Area. Having visited the site a year earlier, we look forward to a second stop at the millhouse, waterwheel and spring-fed swimming hole constructed in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

But we’re hardly out of the car when Eden is invaded by a vandal with a machine. A young girl--perhaps 12, with no parents or guardians in sight--destroys the misty stillness by riding a mini-motorbike through the hovering oaks and onto the trail.

Then we become suddenly aware of a grown man putting his kayak into the Juniper Springs Run. In the cool drizzle, he’s making pained, overheated “Uh, uh, uh” sounds.

At the ranger station the day before, we had learned that volunteer clean-up crews often find mounds of family garbage tossed out in nature’s face--including old steel bed frames and large car parts. Earlier, at the bottom of the dry Lake Eaton Sinkhole, we ourselves spotted a used condom and its wrapper alongside empty beer bottles and other picnic leavings.

The adolescent snake on the mini-motorbike--faced with our fierce, peace-loving stares--turns back. The man in the kayak departs without suffering a stroke.

We tramp out to the exquisite, pocket-size Fern Hammock Springs tucked in the woods down Juniper Creek. A Conservation Corps-style covered fire pit lies hidden in trees there and a rustic wood bridge rises directly above the “boiling”--though contradictorily tranquil--water.

From the bridge, we look down through liquid crystal to hovering fish, polished rocks and grains of white sand.

In the springs’s smoothly rushing current, the gently rising and falling sand seems to puff, to float, to breathe almost.

And for a long while we stand silently, gazing down into the clean center of the living earth.

GUIDEBOOK

Forest Forage

Where to stay: Holiday Inn Silver Springs, 5751 E. Highway 40 (Silver Springs Blvd.), Silver Springs, Fla. 34489; telephone (904) 236-2575. This standard chain motel is among lodgings nearest to the western gateway of Ocala National Forest. Rates about $40 per night. A nearby Denny’s restaurant, always open, will do for early breakfast.

Ocala Silver Springs Hilton, 3600 S.W. 36th Ave., Ocala, Fla. 34474 (exit Highway 68 from Interstate 75); tel. (904) 854-1400. Relative luxury; many conveniences, including Arthur’s restaurant (see below). Rates $80-$120.

Tent and trailer camping sites are available in many forest areas, including Salt Springs and Juniper Springs. Fees range $4-$15.50. For a list of campsites with prices and facilities, call the visitors center at (904) 625-7470.

Where to eat: Arthur’s, Ocala Silver Springs Hilton. Regional American food; breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner $20-$25 per person.

Karling’s Inn, 4640 North U.S. 17, DeLeon Springs; tel. (904) 985-5535. German-Continental cuisine in country setting east of the forest; dinner Tues.-Sun, under $20 per person.

The Sovereign Restaurant, 12 S.E. 2nd Ave., Gainesville; tel. (904) 378-6307. Swiss-Continental with seafood emphasis north of the forest. Dinner $20-$25.

Roger’s Barbecue, Highway 40 at the forest (near visitors center); tel. (904) 625-2020. Convenient, backwoods atmosphere; daily lunch and dinner, $8-$10.

Salt Springs Seafood Restaurant, on Highway 314 near Salt Springs; tel. (904) 685-2615. Atmospheric; caters to hunters and fishermen. Lunch $8-$12.

For more information: Call the visitors center (above), or Florida Division of Tourism, 126 W. Van Buren St., FLDA, Tallahassee 32301; tel. (904) 487-1462.