Swamp and Trooper
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Swamp Wander and Meeting
Trooper It rained heavily overnight so a
later start. Our neighbours left and a new one called “Old
Shoe” arrived. 2,000 boats transit the canal each year and 600,000
travelers arrive by RV, car, bike and kayak. Kayak, are
they made, the wrigglies, the gators...............
We strolled off to seek the black
bear. Yesterday all we got was a couple of squirrels and the back end of a deer
so we had little to find to best that result. There are ten native trees:
sassafras, Sweet Gum, Pignut Hickory, Red Mulberry, Black Cherry, Red Maple,
Sycamore, Loblolly Pine, and Pin Oak. Bobcats, bears, snakes, deer, birds,
nutria, fox, butterflies, possums, raccoons, otters and wrigglies – not a one
but we did meet Trooper.
Trooper
Trooper is our first
Service Dog, he has a badge that says “Ask before you pet”, I asked, we petted.
What a character. We asked what his duty was and Steve (Old Shoe) said “he
alerts me to my seizures, been blown up once too often”. A twenty eight year
career in the Army including tours to Northern Ireland, Germany, Iraq and others
saw him on the end of unpleasant devices. We sat for a while chatting with Steve
and Maggie descended from Colonel William Byrd – one of the original members of
the team commissioned to survey the state line through the swamp in 1728, to run
a dividing line between the disputing colonies of Virginia and North Carolina
and provided the first description of it. Colonel Byrd and his team were almost
devoured by yellow flies, chiggers and ticks, he said it was a “Horrible Desert”
and called it “Dismal”.
Trooper loves to dig,
when alert one ear up, one ear down. He is known to dig forever after sand
crabs, once caught they get tossed in the air and when they play dead he marks
them by weeing on them. One time he concentrated on the task too well and was
bowled over by quite a roller. A smashing little chap. Maggie and Steve
have only owned Old Shoe – soon to be renamed Luff Bug for two weeks. They like
us are heading south so we hope to meet up again.
The canal water here is a dark amber and despite its colour is unusually pure, preserved by tannic acid from the bark of the juniper, gum and cypress trees. Therefore, bacteria cannot grow in the water. Before the days of refrigeration, water from the swamp was a highly prized commodity on sailing ships, chemically pure. It was put in kegs and stayed fresh for a long time. People spoke of the magical qualities of the tea-coloured water and how, if it were regularly drunk, it prevented illness and promoted long life. We agreed we would have to have to be hallucinating and have chapped lips from dehydration before we would quench our thirst in this little lot. The dismal is higher than the surrounding countryside – on a hillside at least twenty feet above sea level. It is one of the few places on the North American Continent where peat is formed. In some places up to thirteen feet deep. A varied assortment of insects, frogs mammals and plants combine to form a unique community and some two hundred and three species of bird have been spotted here, well today we think they are all hiding out somewhere together having a party,” ’cos they aint struttin’ their stuff for us, honey”. Originally the swamp spread over 2200 miles; however, thousands of acres have been cleared and drained for cultivation, reducing the swamp to its present size of 600 miles, engulfing 300,000 acres in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. The oldest and best known of the Dismal Swamp legends is that of the Lady of the Lake, a myth the Irish poet Thomas Moore canonised in 1803 in his poem:
"THEY made her a grave too cold and damp And her firefly lamp I soon shall see, For a soul so warm and true; And her paddle I soon shall hear; And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, Long and moving our life shall be Where all night long, by a firefly lamp, And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree, She paddles her white canoe. When the footstep of death is near."
Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds, -- And when on the earth he sank to sleep, His path was rugged and sore, If slumber his eyelids knew, Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, He lay where the deadly vine doth weep Through many a fen where the serpent feeds, Its venemous tear, and nightly steep And man never trod before. The flesh with blistering dew!
And near him the she-wolf stirr'd the brake, He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright And the copper-snake breathed in his ear, Quick over its surface play'd, -- Till he starting cried, from his dream awake, "Welcome," he said, "my dear one's light!" "Oh when shall I see the dusky Lake, And the dim shore echo'd for many a night And the white canoe of my dear?" The name of the death-cold maid.
Till he hollow'd a boat of the birchen bark, But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp, Which carried him off from the shore; This lover and maid so true Far, far he follow'd the meteor spark, Are seen at the hour of midnight damp The wind was high and the clouds were dark, To cross the Lake by a firefly lamp, And the boat return'd no more. And paddle their white canoe!
I thought I would slip in a blog first and feature a poem, who knows there may be more. The poem above was based on local lore about an Indian maid who died just before her wedding and who is periodically seen paddling her ghostly white canoe across the waters of Lake Drummond. Moore’s poem tells how the bereaved lover came to believe that his lost love had departed her grave and taken to the swamp. He followed her and never returned but was reunited with his Lady of the Lake in death. Most good ‘leg ends’ are rooted in reality. Eerie lights in the middle of the night are not uncommon and have been attributed to ghosts, pirates, madmen or flying saucers. What causes these strange lights is Foxfire (a luminescence given off by the decaying wood by certain fungi), burning methane escaping from decomposing vegetation or smoldering peat.
Back in the Visitors Centre I finally find a Bola. The tool I like most behind the cross headed screw driver. Enough and time for a drink. Back to the bridge and yet another surprise - how to deal with ticks. Marvelous. After all this I need a rub down with the Sporting Life, a much needed change from the Evening Post. As we crossed the bridge we saw Ptarmigan, the catamaran we saw anchored at Hospital Point last night. Andy and Barbara welcomed us aboard for ‘sundowners’. They have owned their lady for four months and are ‘heading south to get to the warm’. “I feel we have ourselves a convoy – ten four rubber duck”.
ALL IN ALL FASCINATING, NO BIRDS BUT TROOPER MADE UP FOR THAT SOON AS THE WEATHER CHANGES WE’RE OUT OF HERE |