Kayaking the tidal salt marshes near Little Talbot State Park, where visitors will see scores of egres, herons and maybe even manatees and stingrays.

Dream Tide: Discovering Amelia Island, Fla.

Before a heron summons the energy to hoist its enormous wings and take flight, it seems to offer a sideways glance at humans who venture too close that reads, “Really, must you?”

Yeah, I must.

I kayak on Little Talbot State Park—a short drive from Amelia Island on Florida’s northeastern coast—in midmorning as the tide rolls in. And the one thing I want to film with my new DSLR camera is a heron’s launch. I maneuver my kayak as close as I can without spooking the bird, inching closer to the thick straw grass mobbed with grasshoppers and quarter-size crabs. I frame the scene and figure those National Geographic shooters have nothing on me. Yet before I focus, the heron can suffer this fool no longer and flies. My shot is gone.

But it hardly matters, as the salt marsh teems with myriad critters. “You’ll see everything out there,” says George, a staffer at Kayak Amelia (kayakamelia.com), before my wife and I shove off on a four-hour trip. “Egrets, all kinds of herons, osprey, ibis and maybe even stingrays, bottlenose dolphins and Indian manatees.” In fact, the estuary is one of the most productive in the world, with 80 percent of the fin and shellfish the area consumes spending part of their lives here.

George also reminds us not to stray from the main channel, as the thin inlets snaking through the marsh with their indecipherable turns—Mother Nature’s watery maze—can render a person clueless in a matter of minutes. Paddling is relatively easy, even against the tide, which can climb 6 feet in minutes. We steam deeper into the marsh, traveling a few miles in a little more than 90 minutes.

There are few places remaining in America that look and feel much the way they did 300 years ago. The tidal marshes near Amelia Island are among those rare habitats. Once deep into the marsh, where the horizon offers nothing but more blue-green water and thickets of straw grass, the place feels primal.

George had mentioned a beach where the marshes collide with Simpson Creek, a tidal river frequented by water-skiers, who love the gentle, open water, and boaters, who cast for striped bass, flounder, bluefish and mullet.

We scan the channel, and 500 yards away we see a sandy outcropping. The beach. If anything can get us to paddle faster on a warm day, it’s the promise of an abandoned patch of sand. We land in several minutes, hop out and fall backwards into clear, shallow water.

“Want to head back and get some dinner?” my wife asks 15 minutes later, amid the lonely whine of locusts. Not really, I say. And so we stay, allowing the tide to rock us as it has for other creatures, large and small, for generations.

Later that evening, Rick Laughlin, chef at Salt at the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island, offers a decidedly different take on the wildness of this barrier island. We sit at the chef’s table, located in a walled-off kitchen nook, private enough for quiet raves about the food and wine (400 bottles), but also close enough to Laughlin’s menagerie to gawk through 6-foot glass. “I like to invent things,” he tells us.

Laughlin is the most serious man I’ve met since arriving on Amelia Island, a place that is more Southern than Floridian, with an unhurried pace, shrimp-and-grit worship and accents as thick as the moss draped from live oaks. 

Salt’s chef yearns to put his restaurant on the map—not only in Florida, but also across the South. For two hours, he convinces me his ambitions needn’t stop at the Mason-Dixon Line. Seven courses arrive in waves, including soup dispensed from a warm plastic syringe and medallions of beef and quail eggs finished to a crispy sizzle atop a 250-million-year-old Himalayan salt block heated to 400 degrees. The presentation goes beyond art; Laughlin manages to answer questions about culinary history.

With more than 40 varieties of salt (from apple-wood-smoked to Peruvian pink), what’s most striking is how Laughlin uses the ancient seasoning to his advantage as a dish’s grace note rather than overwhelming each course. It’s brilliant. Much like the rest of this unassuming island.

Where to Stay

Amelia Island is 13 miles long and 2 miles wide. Despite the barrier island’s size, you won’t feel hemmed in by development or, for that matter, people. There are a few resorts, a smattering of hotels and lots of open space—especially on the wide, perfectly maintained dune-protected beaches. Most afternoons, I had hundreds of yards of sand to myself, save a few shell and shark-tooth hunters.

Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island (ritzcarlton.com; rates from $299). This is probably the most unpretentious Ritz on the planet, with a local staff (one regaled me with wild stories of the opportunistic Captain Louis Aury, who ran the island in the 1800s under the Mexican flag), impressive family programs (studying birds and sea-turtle hatchlings) and holiday dinners (don’t miss the 40-foot Christmas tree). The resort’s spa, offering everything from a zero-gravity hammock massage to sea-salt scrubs, is the size of a small city.

Omni, Amelia Island Plantation (omnihotels.com; rates from $169). Weighing in at 1,300 acres, including a hotel, residences and three golf courses, the place never feels vast. Instead, the resort is a series of small villages with shops and eateries. My favorite: a Segway tour that takes me past kids crabbing on docks, a sunken forest, dunes and 23 clay tennis courts where Venus
Williams has displayed her wizardry.

Williams House Bed & Breakfast (williamshouse.com; rates from $195). Located in the seaside village of Fernandina, the Victorian is owned by Deborah and Byron McCutchen, two affable North Carolinians. Ten rooms grace two houses framed by a gorgeous wrought-iron fence crafted in New Orleans and shipped to the home before its construction in 1859. After breakfasting on Byron’s mean plate of blueberry-stuffed French toast and poached pear, wander the yard to take in the 500-year-old oak before settling on the front porch to hang with Cinnamon, a cat who takes lounging and scrounging to new levels. Also, arrange a horse-drawn carriage tour (ameliacarriagetours.com) of Fernandina’s historic district. Rita Jackson owns the company and her equine engine is Indy, an American Belgian; she’ll pick you up in front of the Williams House.

Getting There

Nonstop service to Jacksonville, Fla., from Washington Dulles International on United Airlines and from Ronald Reagan Washington National on Delta Airlines and US Airways.