03-12-2019 Okefenokee “Land of Trembling Earth”

Current Location: Stephen C Foster State Park, Fargo, Georgia

Clear at 55 Degrees F at 8AM

When arriving at the Okefenokee Swamp, it is hard to get a true sense of the vastness and complexity of the wilderness.  The heavily managed long leaf pine forest that flanks the entry highway 177 is an open maze of tall thin (by Northwest standards at least) pines with a low understory of glossy green palmetto. 

It is only after a few days of deeper immersion into the landscape, especially by water, that I have come to truly appreciate and be in awe of the treasure that is the Okefenokee.

We signed up for the first morning ranger guided boat ride at 10AM and the skies were still shrouded in a bit of fog as we got on the water.  The boat ride was about 90 minutes, and the ranger was extremely knowledgeable about the swamp, the vegetation, and answered most questions well. 

We had some kids on the boat, and they had the most fun counting alligators, with a total of 76 seen by the time we returned to the boat basin. It was a good way to get a feeling for the waters we would explore the next day in our own kayaks. 

Our decision to make the long drive back toward the east entrance and the visitor center was perfect. With steamy temperatures and rain in the forecast, it was a good day to spend some time in the car. 

As we approached the Visitor Center, the entrance to the Swamp Island Drive was on the left, and we took the slow 15mph drive that meandered to Chesser Island and the Chesser Island homestead.  The homestead is a beautiful presentation of what life was like for the hardy settlers who lived on Chesser Island, mostly self sufficient, surviving on what they could grow in the sandy soils and what they could hunt and fish for in the swamplands. 

It was surprising to see how roomy the home was, but the Chesser family was large, with 9 children, and many more grandchildren living on the island until the mid 1950’s.  They had no electricity, but surprisingly, had a telephone.  We couldn’t figure out how they managed that.

The beautiful cypress boards harvested from the island and milled by the family for the house were gray with age but with no sign of rot.  Old cypress is an amazing wood. 

The logging of cypress in the Okefenokee is an old story, with less than 1 percent of remaining old growth cypress left.  Such beautiful wood, and perfect for building homes in the wet climate of the South.

The day was warming, and the sun felt wonderful on our short hike on the Chesser Homestead trail.  We skipped the boardwalk since Mattie couldn’t go but she loved running along on the sandy trail.  As long time readers know, Mattie loves sand!

The visitor center is aging, according to the volunteer we spoke with, who told us they were planning a new, state of the art visitor center for the following year.  However, to us, the current center seemed lovely.

One of the best features of the Visitor Center was of all things, the movie.  It was through this movie, with very minimal narration, that I began to actually get a feeling for the beauty of the swamp. 

From a human scale, at ground level, and from a car, it is impossible to see the complex mosaic of “islands” (dryer habitats) , cypress swamplands, waterways, and “prairies” (wetlands without trees) that extend for miles in all directions.  The aerial views provided in the video were breathtaking, and really changed my perception of Okefenokee.

The “Storyteller” was another treat.  Up close and personal with an audio animatronic human being is weird, especially when he looked me directly in the eyes while telling his stories. He tells several stories if you push the right buttons. 

Another treat was the “jukebox” where different sounds were played.  We listened to a few, and one that stood out was the hog something or other frog.  The next day, as we paddled in the swamp, I was glad to have heard that sound, because I recognized the difference between the frog sound and the huge bellow of the old alligators that exploded across the river like thunder as we paddled in the early part of the day.

After our day exploring, we returned in time to be sheltered before the thunderstorm hit.  It wasn’t a terribly terrifying storm, but there was a lot of rain, and enough thunder and lightning to make it exciting. The beauty of this storm is that it blew out all the hot sticky air we had been experiencing the previous few days and the weather turned cool and fresh.

When we woke up for our planned kayaking day, the skies were gorgeous blue, not a sign of fog in the air, and crisp enough that we needed long sleeved shirts as we boarded our boats by 9AM.

The day on the water filled out another perspective of the swamp.  The Okefenokee isn’t technically a true swamp, because it is not a pool of stagnant water with trees, it is actually a flowing river, much like the Everglades, it has a current flowing through the landscape. 

We felt that current traveling upstream on Billy’s Lake, turning west and north toward Minnie’s Lake.  It was uphill all the way.  Even the slight current was stronger than we expected, and the paddle upstream about 4 miles to the “Minnie’s Lake Rest Stop” was a bit of a workout.

The canoe trail is beautiful, and in places incredibly narrow. Paddling upstream wasn’t that difficult, but on our trip back down it took a bit of skill to turn the boats to keep from being pushed into the cypress trunks by the current.  We saw a lot of marks on those stumps where people hadn’t been very successful.

There weren’t a lot of birds, which surprised us.  Either we are too late or too early in the season, and there was only an occasional great egret, a couple of cormorants, and a red shouldered hawk.  Toward midday we did begin to hear a lot more birdsong, but in the thick cypress swampland, it was hard to actually see a bird.

What we did see were the alligators.  There were many of them, some submerged with only eyes showing among the pond lilies, others swimming across the channel, and many sunning themselves on logs, looking for all the world as though they were hugging their logs.

As we approached the landing, I was startled to see this really big guy right beside me, and for the only time on the trip, I felt like I was too close to an alligator!  He paid me no mind, and I tried to keep paddling while taking his photo and NOT let myself get pushed into him by the current. Alligators don’t seem aggressive at all and if you leave them alone they will leave you alone.

The landing was interesting, sturdy and roomy, with a shade shelter, and a series of wooden steps that made exiting the boats a bit different, but doable.  With that big gator just a few hundred feet away, I was glad for an exit on the wooden step and not in the deep black water below the step.

We enjoyed our lunch there, watching the dragonflies and bumblebees buzzing around, enjoying the young gator on the log nearby, and appreciating that we had enjoyed the entire trip completely to ourselves.  At about that moment, a canoe showed up at the landing, and as we paddled back downstream, we passed a couple more canoes with people wondering how far it was to the shelter.  We also passed someone in a john boat with an idling motor.  I did laugh to myself imagining that guy attempting to get through the narrow spots farther up the trail.

The trip to the landing took about 2.5 hours, and the current took us back to Billie Lake in just an hour. We decided that we had enough in us to paddle upstream a bit more on Billie’s Lake to get to Billie’s island, where there had once been a logging community of more than 700 people.  We still marveled at how in the world those loggers managed to harvest all that old growth cypress in all that water. 

The landing at Billie’s Island was shaded and lovely, and there were a few kayaks and canoes docked where people had disembarked to hike the short trail to what remained of the community.  With more than 9 miles of paddling under our belts, we decided to call it a day and just lolled around a bit at the landing.  The return trip home was quiet and perfect, and as I paddled up the short access canal to the boat basin, I knew it was on my list of one of my favorite paddles ever.

We are so glad we made the effort to come to Okefenokee.  It is not on the way to anywhere, and yet is such a treasure.  We are especially grateful to Judy, who spent a many seasons volunteering at the refuge for writing about this place and inspiring us to seek it out.