I
N 1977, Federal Paper Board Co. donated 13,850 acres to the
North Carolina Nature Conservancy. A further 2,577 acres were
acquired in 2004, and now an area of nearly 17,000 acres in
Brunswick County forms a unique environment that the World
Wildlife Fund has identified as one of the top 10 eco-regions in
North America.
Outside the community of Supply, off N.C. 211, the entrance to
a small parking lot marks the starting point of a 2-mile walking trail
through the Green Swamp Preserve. The path winds through giant
longleaf pine savannas, wildflowers, orchids and carnivorous plants.
After a few minutes figuring out the direction of the trail, we set
off down our own yellow brick road of sorts, following a narrow path
through wispy wiregrass and an early-morning mist that added to the
enchantment.
“Looks like hobbit habitat,” my son observed.
“You never know, there may be all kinds of creatures living here we
know nothing about,” I replied.
We kept walking, keeping an eye out for the small, red diamond
shapes painted on wooden posts that marked the trail. The sound of
the Saturday morning traffic from the highway slowly faded away.
The name “Green Swamp” is a little misleading. There’s no per-manent
black water or cypress trees. Instead, some 13,000 acres are
pocosins.
The word pocosin comes from the Native American Algonquian
language and means “swamp on a hill.” Essentially, it’s a wetland bog
with sandy peat and woody shrubs. They form over hundreds of years
as leaves, pine needles and sticks saturated with water slowly decay to
form peat. The peat becomes a giant sponge that absorbs water from
rainfall and then slowly releases the water to form a bog.
It is on the edges of these pocosins that the magic happens.
An elevated, slippery wooden walkway led us under a canopy of
trees and shrubs like gallberry, titi and sweetbay — all rooted in a
sink of mud and water. The warm air, thick, heavy and vegetal, added
to the feeling that we had stumbled into an enchanted place the likes
of which we had never seen before.
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WBM april 2018