Orlando Sentinel Article

The original text of this article from Kate Santich Sentinel Staff Writer Posted September 24, 2006 is at

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/lifestyle/orl-eaglin06sep24,0,1136246.story


In case this link is down or removed here is the text only of the article. Many thanks to Kate who put in hard work and is an accomplished athlete and biker.

Perhaps there really are two kinds of people in the world, and the dividing line is this: Some see a fork in the road or a trail into the woods but continue contentedly on their way. And others think, I wonder where that goes. . .And they have to find out.

For about as long as anyone can remember, 43-year-old engineering professor Ron Eaglin has done the latter -- a trait that has led him through murky swamps and thorny thickets and the chigger-laden wilderness that is Central Florida. He has suffered hypothermia and heat exhaustion, a broken jaw, hallucinations and an inestimable number of insect bites."Deer flies, bees, ants, fleas, every type of spider known to man -- they've all had their piece of my flesh," he says. "Fire ants I don't even notice anymore."But Eaglin doesn't just forge ahead blithely. In two decades of zealous exploration, he has become intimately familiar with the region's ever-shrinking wild places.

He has become, as one friend puts it, "the guy you want looking for you if you're ever lost in the woods."

Eddie Meadows discovered that the hard way.Meadows is the 62-year-old jogger who this month spent four days lost in the woods near the University of Central Florida. Though Orange County deputy sheriffs and naval investigators searched for several days, Eaglin knew the area so well he figured there was only one place dense enough to cause a man to lose his bearings like that. Once Eaglin joined the search, it took only a few hours to find Meadows -- who by then was dehydrated, disoriented and in acute kidney failure. He had been only a quarter mile from a road."

People say, 'How can you not find your way out?' " Eaglin says. "Well, that's easy to ask -- until you've been there. You have to understand what it looks like and feels like to be in the middle of deep-canopied forest and swamp where you can't see more than 20 feet in front of you. If I blindfolded you and took you out in the woods, not more than 200 yards from a road, and then took the blindfold off, you would be lost -- and probably for a long time."

Eaglin, who has a few other things to keep him busy -- running UCF's engineering technology department, coaching his younger daughter's soccer team, training for adventure races, working on computer programs that have won him recognition from the Department of Homeland Security -- spent the next few days explaining the complexities of the backwoods to the media, including CNN and the BBC. But the following week he was back tromping around in the woods himself, this time to teach a class on orienteering, a blend of cross-country running and navigating through the woods with a map and compass to find hidden checkpoints.

"Hey, it's the hero!" teased a woman as Eaglin arrived. "I saw you on television."The professor blushed. "Yeah, well . . ." he offered sheepishly.On the one hand, Eaglin had been ecstatic to find Meadows. But he was also relieved."I was stopping about every 20 to 30 feet," he says, "and listening for the signs of a body" -- the buzzing of flies and the circling of vultures.In his element

Eaglin doesn't much fit the stereotype of an adventurer. At 5 feet 8 inches tall, he's not a particularly imposing figure. His wire-rimmed glasses, thinning hair and beard give him a professorial look. His nickname, because of his doctorate degree in environmental engineering, is Dr. Ron.But put him in his element, in the middle of nowhere in particular, and it's obvious he would have done just fine scouting alongside Lewis and Clark.

Hiking through the woods of Rock Springs Run State Preserve near Sorrento, Eaglin notices details most people might not -- elusive sand skinks, small patches of prickly pear, banana spiders waiting in the shadows. He points out the signs of man's intrusions -- the unnatural growth of small pine trees in the middle of a field, an abrupt end to the tree line where a bulldozer must have come through.

"And power lines -- you can't be lost if you can see power lines," he says, squinting into an early-afternoon sun. "If you follow it, it's going to take you to somebody who needs power or something that's giving power, but either way it's going to take you to humans."

Eaglin has been exploring woods since he was a kid, moving with his family from Missouri to Illinois, Nebraska, Georgia and finally South Carolina, where he took up cross-country and swimming, played soccer and became a Boy Scout.

He was, from early on, exceptionally bright.

"He excelled in school, taking college classes when he was only 14," says his father, Ronald Eaglin Sr., the past president of Morehead State University in Kentucky, who now lives south of Myrtle Beach. "He was teaching college professors how to use computers when he was still in high school."

Ron Jr.'s most remarkable quality was not his brilliance, though. It was his drive.

The summer he turned 15, Ron got a job on a textile-plant loading dock."He was the only young person out there," says his mother, Bonnie Eaglin. "And it was such hard work. He'd always come home completely exhausted, but he still wanted to swim with his team in the evenings. That's when we found out how much endurance he had. He didn't ever win, in part because he was so tired from working, but he just had so much drive. Nothing seemed to intimidate him."

Taking it to extremes

Consider his method of training for adventure races -- a team sport in which you are given a last-minute map and instructions to trek, mountain bike, rock-climb, kayak and swim through the wilderness, sometimes for several days on end with little or no sleep and carrying your own food and water.

For practice, Eaglin likes to print out U.S. Geological Survey maps from his computer, close his eyes and randomly point to a spot. Then he grabs a training buddy and goes off to find it.Once the point was a marshy area near the St. John's River. His first approach was blocked by barbed vines and briers. Next he decided to cross the marsh itself."At first it was knee deep, and we're happy," he says. "Then it was thigh deep. Then it was chest deep. And then we were swimming. And every time you took a stroke, you churned up what looked like chunks of peanut butter off the bottom and it came bubbling to the top."He found his spot and his way back -- although not before trekking through wire grass and enduring scores of paper-thin cuts all over his body.It was a most excellent workout, he says.

He has raced in searing heat and heavy winter rain. Once, 2 1/2 days into an event, amid a 65-mile mountain-biking section, he hallucinated that his teammates were some mysterious enemy chasing him, so he sprinted away to try to lose them in the woods. When they finally caught up to him, one of the men tackled him. After all, Eaglin was the only one with the map.

Another time, he crashed his road bike and broke his jaw, which required his mouth to be wired shut for six weeks.

His competitors say he is not just tough. He is patient, generous and methodical."Even if you're in the midst of a race, he's willing to give you instructions and advice," says Jason Amadori, 33, a fellow adventure racer from Windermere. "He may not help you find something, but he has no problem in helping you learn how to find it. He's not one to keep secrets just so he can win. He's an incredibly nice guy."

As president of the Central Florida Adventure Racers club and an orienteering expert, Eaglin also plots some of the courses himself. They are notoriously difficult.

"We have these green areas on the map that mean very, very thick vegetation," says Bob Putnam, founder of the Florida Orienteering Club, "and people speak of their unwillingness to go through these impassable areas. And Ron just looks at them, puzzled, and says, 'Everything is passable. It's just that sometimes the going is slower than other times.' "Life with RonIn the middle of Seminole County's Black Hammock Wilderness, amid the dense tangle of trees and brush, is a lovely, solar-paneled, Cracker-style wood-frame house with a climbing wall in the backyard, a ropes course in the front, three dogs, seven cats, one bunny and a large wayward frog.

This, quite fittingly, is the Eaglin home, shared by Ron, his wife of 12 years -- fellow engineer Linda Eaglin -- and daughters Catherine, 9, and Anna, 8.The girls' play room is dubbed "The Jungle Room," its walls painted with tropical birds and a jaguar and elephant, its shelves full of class projects and Ron's exotic musical instrument collection. The kids each have a computer, but television is limited to a single hour per week.

"It's not just that kids waste time watching TV," says Eaglin, heading out back to check a banana tree for ripe fruit. "They waste their lives."

Most mornings he awakens before daylight to run in the darkness through the woods -- which is where he has discovered the abandoned cats and dogs that are now part of the family. Then he rides his bicycle 11 miles to work, carrying 35 pounds of gear on his back, and swims half a mile at the university pool before teaching class and conducting research.After work, he pedals home, coaches soccer and sometimes does a second run.

If it sounds like a delicately planned existence, it's not.

In July, heading home from a family camping trip in the Ocala National Forest in their 1994 GMC van with its 180,000 miles on the odometer, Ron spotted a dirt road off to the side. "I wonder where that goes," he mused.

Of course he couldn't resist.He plowed onto the detour, flanked by heavy vegetation, until it opened up into a field of bright sunlight. In front of them, the road turned to sugar sand.

"Let's go through it," Ron said. His wife shook her head. Soon, of course, they would be digging at the sand, trying to get the van unstuck.

Linda eventually gave up, called for help on her cell phone, pulled out a lawn chair and read a book while she waited.

Catherine, who, like her sister, has been training with Dad for future adventure races, voiced concern that the lone bag of pretzels wouldn't carry them through the night. She began to build a spit on which she planned to cook wild turkeys. Anna launched construction on a shelter they could sleep in.

About three hours later, though, as the sun was sinking low in the sky, a tow truck finally showed up and hoisted them out.

"We were all filthy dirty, but Ron took us to a nice restaurant on the way home," Linda says. "And that's life with Ron -- always an adventure."

Kate Santich can be reached at 407-420-5503 or ksantich@orlandosentinel.com.First photo ran on page F1.