A Place of Memories

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

A PLACE OF MEMORIES

Pied-billed Grebe, Podilymbus podiceps, swimming in Mixon's Hammock; Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia.

After tensely navigating through over a mile of the Narrows, the scene expanded forth into a beautiful prairie. A juvenile alligator and a pair of Ibises welcomed us into the opened, bright sky. Yet again, I missed a photo of a colorful male Wood Duck, but captured a sharp shot of a nervously diving Grebe.

A young American Alligator on the swamp prairie near Mixon's Hammock; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia.

It appeared as if we had emerged onto a remote African savannah in another time. Tall brown grasses lined the sides of the canoe trail and stretched far off into the distance. Large green Spatterdock leaves floated in small bays as the canoe channel began to widen.

​This beautiful prairie was a place of solitude, a place of memory; memories of logging and wild fires of centuries gone by. Like passing through jagged dragon’s teeth, the waterway was lined on both banks with large, jagged Cypress stumps, blackened by fire. We passed through a double line of vertical pilings standing five feet out of the water; the remains of a logging train track. ​

White Ibis on the prairie near Mixon's Hammock; Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia.

The National Park’s website had warned that water levels were low and dropping. Although it hadn’t seemed the case so far, the condition now became obvious. The widened bases of the Cypress trees stood far out of the water, taking on an almost comical shape, skirted as with large dresses of the Victorian era. At one passage between two Cypress trees, a piece of pvc pipe was screwed to one tree to act as a bumper for passing boats. But the bumper was a good ten to twelve feet above our heads! ​