It's not exactly a pristine wilderness. There are areas for campers, areas for picnicking and a large building housing a small shop, registration office, a lounge and a meeting room. But the charm of Cooksey's is that its owner, Ed Cooksey, has managed the open areas with the annual rhythms of wildflowers and wildlife in mind. The wild areas in the campground are repositories of plants, insects, reptiles, mammals, and birds that used to call the whole of Anastasia Island home. Here is where I first practiced photography and felt secure enough to sit for hours at the lake on the north end of the property to photograph a pair of osprey building a nest.
Passion vines grow profusely here, perfect daytime hiding places for fawns.
Painted buntings frequent the edges of the scrub area along the campground back road. I saw my first king birds at Cooksey's as they hunted insects at the edge of an open field. Over a 20 year period I've become acquainted with the seasonal rhythms of Cooksey's and know exactly where to look for peacock butterflies and four-spotted pennant dragonflies. It's a sad truth that when you get to know an area intimately, you feel it belongs to you. You become lulled into a false sense of permanence.