Chinsegut’s Big Pines

Chinsegut Big Pine — Mom dwarfed by the Chinsegut big pines

I took my parents with me this weekend on an exploration of the trails at Chinsegut Wildlife and Environmental Area near Brooksville. Here’s Mom taking photos of some of the incredibly tall longleaf pines in this stand of virgin forest on the Big Pine Tract.

This patch of forest is little-known and, on a perfect sunny morn, we had the entire preserve to ourselves. It’s undergoing restoration of the understory, which probably hadn’t been burned in some time.

Just up the road (and connected by a 2-mile trail that we did not hike, the Prairie to Pines), we did a second hike at the Nature Center Tract.

I was surprised that, on such a sunny, cool morning, no one else was out on a hike. But then, I think this may be the only place you’ll find information on the trails other than the FWC website, as I do not have them in any of my books – they’re new to me! – and I don’t think they appear in any others. What a serendipitous find!

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Sandra Friend

Author of 45 books, Sandra Friend established FloridaHikes.com in 2006 to expand on the field research she'd completed for her first six hiking guides. She has been honored with lifetime achievement awards from the Florida Trail Association and the Florida Outdoor Writers Association.