Sweet gum

The nature preserve
Saturday, March 23, 4 pm

I saw the other day where South Carolina is now in severe drought status, except for the mountains of our upstate where the rainfall conditions are “near normal,” oddly enough. Here in the Lowcountry we need days and weeks of soaking rain to get the streams, rivers, and swamps flowing normally again.

I was walking through the cypress swamp a few minutes ago and noticed how the main stem of the swamp is still just a dry channel, cypress knobs sticking up through dry leaves. It seems sort of silly walking along an elevated boardwalk through this dry-as-a-bone low-lying area. At the bridge over the main branch, I stopped to look at a sweet gum tree, bent over and showing, right near my face, new growth starting to leaf out. The leaves, when fully grown, are quite distinctive and easy to identify. How shiny green and fresh the miniature leaves are now. In this early stage they remind me of the new ivy you see growing up along garden walls. I am thankful to see this new growth. In a time of drought, I sometimes wonder how far down the roots have to go for water and whether there will be enough to slake the trees’ thirst this summer.

Later…along the trail:

Stopping to rest and let the cool wind over the former rice fields, today only partially flooded, be my soothing balm. It was nice sitting underneath the old live oak tree for a bit, but the gnats and insects were starting to discover me. And this after freezing temperatures last night. Here is it free of them now, thanks to this wind.

I hear all kinds of nature sounds around me, including birds and little wetlands creatures, making their disctinctive calls to each other. Maybe frogs? I am not too good at identifying the sounds. I am better at identifying trees, and with birds, I have to laboriously pore over my bird guide to try to make the identification.

There’s a row of cedar trees along the embankment, or dike, stretching the length of the impoundment. They are unchanging all year long with their evergreen needles. It’s so peaceful here that I once again find myself in that zone of being that takes me away and apart from the world and its terrible jolts of reality and horrible news. But it’s always for so brief a period of time that I am able to escape completely while out here.

All the sounds around me are reminders of the stirring into new life that spring brings. The land is singing. The wind is bustling about its business. Life is renewed with the arrival of the season, officially ushered in three days ago, but in my heart weeks ago when the warm days of February left no doubt that winter is perhaps our most transient season in South Carolina.

I turn to look at the woods I’ve just left behind as I make my way along the dike at the eastern end of the sanctuary, and I see the most beautiful shades of pale green on all the trees in the distance. In just one week that swamp forest has been transformed. It is perhaps the most splendid sight in all of nature, this annual rebirth and reawakinging of trees in spring. There are few finer displays at any other time of the year, and I don’t have to travel to the mountains in the fall to witness it. It is right outside my door, and it is all around me now.

(Later… Sunday morning, March 24, 1 am: I spotted in my binoculars, flitting around from branch to as I was about to leave the nature preserve yesterday, a bird which I have tentatively identified, to my delight (although I may be wrong) as a Carolina wren, the state bird of South Carolina. I listened to its sound and feel more sure that is what it was. But as I say, I am quite the amateur at identifying birds. It is something I must study harder so I will be more confident of my skills in this area. Anyway, it makes a nice way to end this entry.)