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Spider lilies bloom along the Black River bank. ngie Carl came to Wilmington to work for The Nature Conservancy in 2004. Three
Sisters was her first exposure to old-growth swamp forests, and she assumed
swampland everywhere was as beautiful and captivating as the area she was
newly tasked with managing. Not until Stahle returned for further research in
2015 did Carl learn how unique the Black River and Three Sisters Swamp are.
Carl recalls trudging through the swamp with the research team, counting trees,
an excited Stahle stopping every few minutes to exclaim how magnificent the
forest was, how remarkable — and how surprisingly old, even to him — the
cypress trees appeared to be. The team bored long, thin cross-sections from the
weathered cypress trees and transported the samples back to Stahle’s Arkansas
lab for analysis. The results were record-breaking: Amid a forest of thousand-year-
old cypresses stands a truly ancient tree that is 2,624 years old.
A bald cypress grows unlike other trees, a wide, swollen base flaring out below
a slender trunk, and a distinctive root system sending “knees” jutting up out of
the water or ground near the tree. As the tree matures, the basal swell becomes less
pronounced, the trunk thickening to closer match the size of the base. You can
glean clues about a cypress’s age by observing, as Stahle calls it, the “gnarl factor.”
Ancient trees have withstood many storms, and you can observe healed wounds
from limbs blown away decades or even centuries ago. This particular ancient tree
took root about the year 605 BCE. At that same time, King Nebuchadnezzar had
recently come into power in Babylon and had begun construction of his (fabled)
Hanging Gardens. Neither the Roman Colosseum nor the Great Wall of China
had been built. The tree rings tell tales, recording a severe drought that might help
explain the disappearance of the Lost Colony at Roanoke. The bald cypress forest
creates a kind of temple on the water, suspending time and turning a kayak trip
into a meditation on the transcendence of nature.
The Black River and sites like Three Sisters are important to our shared history,
and you don’t need to be a scientist or professional conservationist to help care for
them. Donations to organizations like The Nature Conservancy enable the protec-tion
of these areas. Phone calls and letters to elected officials go a long way toward
ensuring natural resources are around for generations to come. Everyday actions
like correctly disposing of chemicals and motor oil, limiting the use of fertilizers
and pesticides, and choosing cleaning products that are safe for river ecosystems
are all practical ways, too. Whether you’re an outdoor enthusiast, a local history
buff, or simply a lover of nature, there are many ways to participate in the ongo-ing
preservation of the Three Sisters Swamp and its ancient trees, natural wonders
more enduring than much that human civilization has built.
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