A Walk in the Park
Charles Griffith Red Bay Park to Lake Arthur Tippie
By Steve Gaul
Long before developers started dividing Florida into endless quaintly-named subdivisions, each with its own man-made “borrow pit” lake, Villagers were busy making their own artificial lake. Lake Arthur Tippie, in the oldest section of Melbourne Village, lies between Norman and South Drives. Recently, I spent a sunny afternoon walking around “the Lake.”
I started at the Hammock Road entrance to Charles Griffith Red Bay Park. This park used to be part of Lake Arthur Tippie Park, but was renamed in '96 or '97 in memory of Charles Griffith, who for years was active on the Parks and Paths committee. As a matter of fact, Bill and Shirley Hills and 'Chuck' Griffith cleared the air potatoes from this parkland in the 1990’s. You'd be hard-pressed to find one there today.
I didn't travel far before finding an inviting resting spot – a bench provided by the Parks and Paths Committee. From that vantage point I could see the other name-sake of this park, a red bay tree (there are several, I'm told). As I walked westward, I was struck at how open and light these woods are, composed mostly of pines. The undergrowth, also noteworthy, was practically crawling with smilax and grapevines. This time of year, the smilax is crazy with growth, their tender, tendril-studded shoots climbing everywhere.
Continuing on, I noted a few oaks, but it's the pine trees that leave an impression. I imagined workers walking along these same wooded trails, collecting sap from pines to be made into turpentine. An old sentinel, a dead turpentine tree from those early times, stands nearby where the main path through Charles Griffith Park meets the path from South Drive. This area is also a great place to find Habenaria orchids blooming next to the trails in December and January.
Continuing west, things started getting interesting. The path forks around an old wellhead that was used to maintain water levels in the Lake. The water is guided to the lake by a small stream and the path continues on both sides of it. I'm sure that eventually this stream bed will disappear into the undergrowth, as the AHF opted to pipe the well water directly to the Lake several years ago. In and around this area I marveled at the stands of bamboo, in places leaving a blanket of spent bamboo leaves underfoot and dead canes arched overhead. There's also an area of uncontrolled growth of invasive 'house' plants from neighboring yards, including several types of philodendron. These non-natives really transform from mere house plants to jungle foliage once they start to climb a tree, but they are none-the-less invasive and don't belong in our parkland.
After the last stand of bamboo, the trail opens up to Lake Arthur Tippie, named for an early member of the AHF who served as President from 1948 to 1953. AHF records trace this man-made lake to Melbourne Village beginnings - indicating its completion around 1951. There's a trail that circles the Lake but the parkland is very narrow and has the appearance of going across residential yards that back to the Lake. As I walked around the Lake, I wondered how deep it might be and what was living in it, but the Lake offers no clues. Its surface is clogged with thick clumps of algae growth.
At the west end of the lake there are two exit paths that end on West Pine Road. Walking through this area I noted more non-natives including several Melaleucas, trees native to Australia that were used as “quick” landscaping for years because of their rapid growth.
As I retraced my steps back to the entrance on Hammock Road, my thoughts turned to the wisdom of early Villagers to set aside these parklands and to the volunteers who, over the years, have maintained the trails and preserved these parks for our enjoyment.
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