Swamp remains a special place but shows the changing balance of nature.
“No man steps twice into the same river; for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man.” Heraclitus
The single, towering longleaf pine with the twisted trunk still stood on the ridge overlooking the oxbow lake and the expanse of bayou-veined cypress/tupelo swamp spread across the wide floodplain of the southeast Texas river.
Sight of the old tree brought a mix of comfort and melancholy — a dichotomy that toggled back and forth on this April morning spent fishing and becoming reacquainted with a place that has for decades been a sustaining touchstone connecting me to the natural world.
It has been a place where change and stability have, for the most part, lived in the seemingly incongruous balance that defines natural systems. And spring always has been the best time to learn from that.
There was plenty of that balance to see at work. But there also was much that showed its increasingly disturbing unbalance.
When I first came to this place almost a half-century ago, the ridge above the swamp held a fine stand of ancient longleaf, trees so large it took two people to completely reach around one. I guess I saw them as protective sentinels of this place.
Then, one day a decade or so ago, they were gone, fallen to the saw and transformed into lumber like almost all of the longleaf pine that once dominated much of eastern Texas. The lone survivor was left, I guessed, because its twisted trunk made it unmarketable. Gone for good
The land adjacent to the swamp had changed hands, and the new owners had taken to shaping it to their desires. The longleafs were the first to go, replaced now with a metastasizing tangle of Chinese tallow trees, an invasive species with no redeeming qualities for the land or the wildlife on it.
This spring, there were other changes. On the slope between the ridge and the swamp, a ramshackle trailer sagged in a tractor-mowed opening where once were only acres of blackberry and dewberry brambles grew — brambles from which each April and May for more than 40 years I’d gathered gallons of the sweet drupes. No more succulent blackberries and dewberries for cobblers or simply eating raw after mixing with a bit of heavy cream and a sprinkle of sugar. It was a bitter revelation.
But, it seemed, the swamp and the oxbow were much the same as always, at least in many ways that counted.
The timing of the visit had been determined by the natural rhythm of this place. We came when it was time to come — when the river let us. And that invitation was going to be a brief one.
Almost continuously since last summer, the swamp and rest of the floodplain of this river had been covered with several feet of water, the result of flooding from a series of torrential rains that poured muddy runoff into the river’s watershed. But over the previous couple of weeks, rains had stopped and the river level began a steady fall that, for the first time in months, saw the waterway back in its banks and the drowned swamp and bottomlands revealed.
The falling water level would force fish back into the channels and sloughs, bayous and oxbows, where a combination of increased metabolism from warming temperatures, a flush of forage and the onset of spawning season would make fish more active and aggressive. Fishing can be outstandingly productive under such conditions.
But it would not last long; more rain was coming, and the window created by falling water level would slam it shut in a day or so. Fish, birds still abound
Using the trolling motor to ease the boat along the oxbow’s shoreline, we pitching lures and plopping hooks baited with minnows around into the water. With heartening regularity, a “thump” would shoot up the line or a bobber would tremble, then disappear beneath the surface and we’d be fast to an animated largemouth bass or a thick, silver/ white/black/green crappie or a red-eyed goggleye.
Connecting with each fish was like plugging directly into a giant living organism, each surge or jump like a tingle of electric current. It was the same feeling as it always has been, each hook-up charged with the same surprise and wonder as if it was the first time we’d caught a fish.
But the fish and their catching were just a part of the whole. The willows and cypress and ash, neon green with new leaves, smelled of spring. And in their branches and flitting here and there was an aerial parade of bird life. Wood ducks boring past on blurred wings, their haunting squeal reverberating through the swamp. A halfdozen species of warblers, dressed in bright yellows and blacks, blues and chestnut, hopped along limbs, pursuing insects that will fuel the birds’ next leap on their spring migration. Pileated woodpeckers. Green herons. Snowy egrets, Ospreys. Swallow-tailed kites. A barred owl.
Down the way, the distinct, serrated outline of an alligator poked above the water’s surface. Then another. And another. They were sprinkled here and there, black forms, some immobile, some slowly moving across the surface. Most looked to be 6- to 8-foot females. Two or three were better than 9 feet — males. Within a week or two, the throaty roars of those males will shatter the swamps’ quiet as alligator mating season begins.
We poked the boat into the edges of the swamp, under the trees rimming the oxbow and bayou, and looked back into the shadowed half-water/half-land world. At first glance, it appeared barren and bleak and lifeless, almost all vegetation except the trees smothered by the month’s long flooding. ‘A world of wounds’
But such purging floods are part of the life cycle of the swamp, the floods drowning all life but leaving behind a layer of rich, nutrient-laden soil from which new life springs. And, if you looked close, you could see signs of that renewing life. Pickerelweed poking from the shallows. A handful of false dragon-head with their blue flowers in a sunny, semi-dry spot back among the cypress and tupelo. A spider lily here, a patch of lizard tail there.
These plants were welcomed sights — heartening signs of the swamp renewing itself.
Other plants were not so welcomed. Clusters of giant salvinia, a non-native invasive plant, clotted the shallows and floated in malignant mats throughout the oxbow and the river and the bayous. The plant carries with it the potential for absolute destruction of the swamp’s aquatic ecosystem; it can grow at stunning rate — doubling in area over a matter of days, eventually covering the water’s surface with a carpet that smothers all life beneath it. If salvinia gets the chance, it will forever change the swamp; it’s already having an impact, having suffocated several small, isolated waters in the floodplain.
The day, and the swamp, had an ephemeral feel to it, as it always does. But this day was different, somehow. So much change. Such conflicting messages: the blessing of birds and alligators, hungry fish, the thick aroma of living earth and the warmth of good company with whom to share it; the curse of seeing the slow, steady and seeming inevitable destruction that has been gnawing at the edges and is beginning to tear into the guts of this special place.
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds,” seminal conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote almost 70 years ago in “The Round River,” an essay on the challenge of sustaining functioning ecosystems.
It’s a good bet Leopold spent a few bittersweet spring days fishing and just mucking around in a special swamp. And, despite the moments of concern about the future of such places, I bet he savored and appreciated every second he spent in them.