 Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Great Egret in the Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. "Plume hunting" for sport and fashion was common in the years before laws were enacted to protect our birds. The following is an excerpt from A Florida Sketch-Book by naturalist Bradford Torrey in 1895:
Torrey, Bradford. "Chapter 4: “Along the Hillsborough”." A Florida Sketch-Book. 1895.
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Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Plain-bellied Watersnake along the Trembling Earth Nature Trail; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 11, 2015. "It was a 'copper-bellied moccasin,' he declared, whatever that may be, and was worse than a rattlesnake." A humorous story from naturalist Bradford Torrey's 1894 book, A Florida Sketchbook. It would be even more humorous if ignorant snake killing wasn't still common.
Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Vintage Black and White Okefenokee Cypress Swamp photograph with Great Egret bird, Georgia. Burned tree stumps and prairie grasses of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. Another sixty-one miles of long, flat, boring roads through the pine flat-woods of South Georgia on GA-94. Besides the occasional barns and homesteads, the landscape is devoid of memorable landmarks. If the roads weren’t so perfectly straight, one might feel as if he were going in circles. In his Florida Sketch Book, Bradford Torrey writes…
The pine flat-woods in South Georgia are much different than the pine forests of the Piedmont. The southern pines seem taller and less foliated; they are more mindful of each others’ personal space than their crowded Loblolly cousins in the north. With only patches of Saw Palmetto and Broomsedge, the pines stretch beyond and behind, and on either side; like fields of telephone poles ever receding as one approaches. Other than passing shadows cast by the soaring vultures, there is little shade or retreat from the overhead sun.
We will soon be entering the Okefenokee, the Land of Trembling Earth… Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Alligator Warning sign in the Stephen C Foster State Park; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. Tuesday, 6:35 PM - As the fading light of dusk was about to force us to our tent site, a couple walking up the road said, “There is a gator behind the boat barn. But be careful; he’s out of the water and he is biiiiigggg.” We walked the quarter mile to the end of the cul-de-sac and pretended not to see the “NWR Staff Only Beyond this Point” signs. We looked around the left side of the shed; nothing. As we came around the right… “Whoa! That is a big one!” He was sprawled out on the grass with his feet facing upwards. He must have fallen asleep sunning himself, for the sun had gone down an hour ago. He was turned away from us, so we snuck up close behind him. There was no sign of movement, not even of breathing. In fact, he didn’t even flinch when pelted with a couple of pine cones. Wondering if he was dead, I felt the temptation to grab the end of his tail, but figured that was the kind of thing that gets one in the news. We decided just to head back and check if he would still be there in the morning. As we walked back to camp, we half-jokingly discussed how we’d get a nine foot gator back home to skin and tan. We spent the last two hours safely away from the sting of the mosquitoes in our tent playing battleship, reading, and planning the next two days. The night air cooled well enough for sleeping, and we fell asleep to the hoots of the Barred Owls. I awoke a few times that night; once to repeated rustling and light footsteps in the leaves outside our tent.
Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  American Alligator swimming at dusk in the Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. Stephen C Foster State Park. "The artist can find in this Swamp scenes for masterpieces – from the beautiful to the somber – for a while there are scenes of unsurpassed beauty, there are others dark, dangerous and foreboding.”
Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Green Heron along the Trembling Earth Nature Trail; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 10, 2015. ©www.williamwisephoto.com In 1895, naturalist Bradford Torrey wrote of the Green Heron being at home in watery woods such as the Okefenokee Swamp:
Torrey, B. (1895). A Florida Sketch-Book. Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Alligator with red eyes swimming in dark Okefenokee Swamp Alligator at night. The old time gator hunters and Swampers used to hunt alligator at night by torch or spotlight. The shiny crystals in the alligator’s eye, called the tapetum lucidem, cause them to shine bright red in the dark night. Once located, a quick shot from the hunter’s rifle aimed between the glowing eyes ends its life. But sometimes the alligator isn’t killed. And what doesn’t kill you makes you wiser! From that point forward, the eye shine of these wise gators quickly blinks out as the hunters’ lanterns approach as the alligator submerges. In his 1935 book, The Alligator’s Life History, E.A McIlhenny writes, “Old alligators are now very shy of man, and as they usually have large underground tunnels in which to hide, they sometimes cannot be gotten either by light or by pole, and an alligator who has been shot at once by the light of a bull's-eye is never again approachable with a light. As soon as an alligator that has been shot at but not killed sees a headlight, it sinks under the water. These alligators are known as ‘blinkers,’ and are entirely shy of night hunters.” E.A. McIlhenny (1872 – 1949), of the McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce company, was a hunter, explorer and naturalist that established the Avery Island wildlife refuge on his family estate in Louisiana and wrote The Alligator's Life History in 1935. While some of his statements are criticized by modern science, he was one of the most knowledgeable alligator experts in the country at the time. His work contains valuable information and entertaining anecdotes. Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  American Alligator swimming at dusk; red glow from the tapedum lucidum in the eyes reflecting the camera flash. Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 10, 2015. ©www.williamwisephoto.com Shining the spotlight from the bow of our john boat, shining specks materialized across the inky black waters within the searching beams of light. Although invisible with the unaided eye, the glowing red eyes revealed dozens upon dozens of alligators in the lake surrounding our boat. By pursuing the glowing eyes, we were there to capture, tag and release as many gators as we could that night. It was on that 1995 trip our ecology professor taught us the details of the tapetum lucidum.
Many animals have a reflective membrane in the eyes called the tapetum lucidum, which aids in night vision. The crystals in this incredibly designed membrane take the low light coming in through the eye and reflect it, thereby multiplying the amount of light passing through the retina. Built in night vision! That same tapetum lucidum is what causes that annoying “red eye” in your indoor flash photographs of family and friends. But while in the Okefenokee, instead of spending post-production time on “red eye reduction," I used it to my advantage. As a gator passed by at dusk, I set my camera for a decent nighttime exposure. And even though it was two far for my flash to fill the scene with light, I used just enough flash to cause intentional “red eye” on the alligator, thus producing an eerie, dragon-like appearance in the photograph. Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Alligator in Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia; Stephen C Foster State Park. March 10, 2015. Excerpt from the 1926 book History of the Okefenokee, by Hamp Mizell and AS McQueen:
“Alligator hunting affords excellent sport, and requires considerable courage, for it is no laughing matter to haul a wounded alligator into a boat on a dark night. They can – and do – become nasty customers at times and are capable of inflicting serious wounds, either with their long teeth or with their tails. A large alligator can very nearly kill a man with a vicious swipe of the tail.” Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Southern Banded Watersnake, Nerodia fasciata, in Okefenokee Swamp Park National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. Stephen C Foster State Park. March 10, 2015. The most noticeable, or, I should say, most unavoidable sight on the Trembling Earth Nature Trail was the gnats; great clouds of gnats six feet in diameter, swarming at eye-level on the boardwalk. We pass through one cloud - swatting and waving our hands with eyes squinted and mouth shut tight - only to encounter another gnat cloud a few feet further down the boardwalk. Swatting did absolutely nothing; like trying to blow a path through thick fog with your mouth. With my eyes squinted and facing down, I happen to notice a quick movement below the boardwalk and a stirring of the tannin-stained blackwater swamp. “A snake!” my daughter shouts. She is somehow always the first to spot the serpents on our wildness hikes. Sure enough, down in the sphagnum moss slithered a Southern Banded Watersnake, Nerodia fasciata. One cool reptile was now off our checklist. But where were the alligators? Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Green Heron along the Trembling Earth Nature Trail boardwalk in the Stephen C Foster State Park; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. As with most wildlife photography, success can be hit-or-miss. After many forays into the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, a 400,000+ acre swamp located in south Georgia, there are days I fill SD cards to capacity, and days where I wish there was more to see than empty branches on tall trees. But never “write off” a particular area. Just because no wildlife was seen during one visit, doesn’t mean you won’t be surprised on another.
I have walked the short boardwalk within the Okefenokee’s Stephen C Foster campground dozens upon dozens of times. I can walk the distance to the dead end and find nothing. But upon turning around just a few minutes later find a colorful Green Heron that had been skulking down in some scrub on my first pass, only to be flushed out for a photography by the returning sound of my footsteps. Take it slowly on your hikes and paddles. Even if you don’t photography many animals, landscape opportunities abound. Take in the sun and fresh air; feel the texture of the cypress bark and leaves; breathe in the aromas of wildflowers; search the shadows for fiddleheads and mushrooms. Never be reluctant to make a second trip. You may see something now, when before you didn’t! Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Sunset over a swamp Prairie in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. Stephen C Foster State Park. March 10, 2015. An excerpt from Francis Harper's 1913 paper "A Biological Reconnaissance of the Okefinokee Swamp", published in The Auk, the official publication of the American Ornithological Society:
 Alligator basking on a log in a Cypress Swamp; Minnie's Lake, Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge Sign. US Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior. After miles of seemingly endless, boring driving through pine flat-woods, one hopes for a sign from heaven that the swamp is nearing. And that first “sign” is literally a large, wooden sign marking the entrance to the refuge! The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1937 as a “refuge and breeding ground for migratory birds and other wildlife”. The Swamp survived an attempt at draining in the late 1800’s and was logged extensively in the early 1900’s before becoming a refuge in 1937 by declaration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It encompasses 401,880 acres (628 square miles), roughly 35 miles north to south and 25 miles east to west.  Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Sophie, the resident American Alligator of the Stephen C Foster State Park; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 10, 2015. Tuesday, 6:29 PM - We failed to see any gators out on the swamp boardwalk, so before heading back to camp we decided to check the boat dock and canoe launch up the canal. Amanda called out, “GATOR!” as a ripple splashed in the middle of the boat bay. “It went under right there.” We watched and waited for a minute. When it resurfaced, our gator turned out to be a rather large soft-shelled turtle. Soft-shells aren’t the most attractive turtles. In fact, my nephew described one we encountered on a Disney Resort as, “the ugliest turtle I’ve ever seen!” Their slender, long heads look like old fashioned Coke bottles capped with an unattractive pig’s snout. Their shells are relatively flat like an oversized, gray, rubber pancake.  Softshell Turtle; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 10, 2015. A little bit further on, the water stirred and swelled just beyond the “Danger, Alligators Present” sign. Again we waited. After a minute we spotted a foot-long scaled creature just below the surface. But it wasn’t an alligator. We had been tricked again, this time by a Gar. Often, Gar resemble alligators (in fact, one subspecies is named an Alligator Gar). They possess long, scaly-armored bodies and long snouts filled with jagged teeth. An outdoors magazine once contained an article about a sportsman fishing for Gar with a crossbow that was pulled from his boat and dragged through the water after spearing an impressively large Gar. It was a neat fish to see, but not the alligator we were looking for. Twice tricked, but not giving up while there was still some light, we decided to walk further down the canal. Out towards the swamp we spotted a dark object in the lane between the lily pads. By the v-shaped ripples breaking in front, we could see it was travelling rather quickly in our direction. Finally, a gator, and heading our way! I began snapping photos even though it was low light. It swam all the way in and circled the boat bay; quite comfortable in close association with the visitor’s office. As the sky darkened, I tried some low-light manual camera settings. Using the flash brought out some beautiful red-eyed gator shots that turned out to be my favorite photos from the entire week.  Sophie, the resident American Alligator of the Stephen C Foster State Park; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. March 10, 2015. We later learned from the park staff that this was Sophie, the “resident gator.” She frequented the boat bay and had babies along the bank opposite the rental canoes. Each morning and evening for the rest of our trip we stopped to say hello to Sophie. She calmly patrolled the boat bay in the evenings and occupied a small opening or harbor in the lily pads during the day. Just behind her daytime resting spot was a ramp of loose dirt up the bank; no doubt a convenient ascent to her nesting site. Our final morning of the trip, we were finally able to catch a glimpse of one of Sophie’s babies crawling out of the duck weed.
Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message  Green Heron along the Trembling Earth Nature Trail in Stephen C Foster State Park; Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia. Tuesday, 4:13 PM - After pitching camp in the Stephen C Foster State Park campground, the game with my daughter was to see who would spot our first alligator. So we headed down the Trembling Earth Nature Trail and onto the boardwalk that heads into the swamp. On our way, two woodpeckers chased each other, spiraling around and through the trees; a doe and fawn casually fed on the grass near the cabins, and a Green Anole darted across our path. Being primarily hikers, I was a bit disappointed to find only a short, 2-mile hiking trail. But it isn’t any fault of the park services, seeing as the majority of the refuge is under water! The trail gets its name from the English translation of the Indian word Okefenokee. The wide, ADA portion of the trail loops on solid, dry ground and is lined on either side with palmettos, downed wood and patches of standing water. A few tall pines and snags stand within the loop. Other than Catbirds and other small, flitting birds, we didn’t encounter any wildlife on that first portion of the trail. Near the back of the loop, a spur of the boardwalk heads 2,000 feet out into the standing water of the swamp. Underneath lies 2 to 3 feet of dark tinted water, but very clear to the bottom, revealing submerged debris, logs, grasses and vegetation. As we neared the mid-point of the boardwalk, a Green Heron burst aloft between the bushes on my left and stopped on a limb to check out the intruders. An agitated rooster-like crown covered his head but then smoothed back as he settled on a perch; beautiful, shimmering, iridescent shades of blue, green, and tan. To my daughter’s dismay (she was ready to see what lie up ahead), I stayed with the heron for at least ten minutes, following him from perch to perch, waiting for the opportune “Kodak moment.”
As we continued, we ran into a few catbirds and spotted some Egrets feeding off in the distance. Although we found and photographed two snakes along the boardwalk (Amanda first spotting both), we didn’t see any alligators. Though we didn’t voice it, we were both a tad disappointed when we reached the end of the boardwalk: how can it be a swamp without an alligator? |
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In December 1993 I came to know the Designer and Creator of this wonderful planet and its creatures: Jesus Christ.
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