Revisiting The Okefenokee Swamp

Canal Diggers Trail, watercolor, 10" x 14."

On our recent Florida vacation I just had to visit the Okefenokee Swamp again. Our friends told us there had been extensive fires last summer and thousands of acres in the refuge had burned. I wanted to see the extent of the damage.

Fire in the wilderness is a natural phenomena, and as our guide sagely remarked, if it weren't for periodic  fires, the area would become so overgrown it would be known as the Okefenokee Forest, rather than Swamp. In fact, the peat floor was still smoldering in parts of the northwestern section of the refuge.

However, the lovely boardwalk trail that took visitors through the swamp out to an observation tower was gone, so the best way to see the swamp was to get out on the water, on one of the small boats, or stick to a few trails still open near the Visitor's Center such as the Long-leaf Pine and Canal Diggers Trail. We explored this short trail while waiting our turn for the boat ride, and found a narrow bridge crossing a small creek. There was no time to paint it then, but I hoped we could return later for a sketch.

Entering the Okefenokee Swamp

Our tour guide with Okefenokee Adventures, Joey was a seventh-generation Okefenokeer (married to an eighth generation Okefenokeer) and a colorful character. He worked us tourists on the boat with a well-worn routine full of jokes and set pieces while regaling us with interesting facts and bits of swamp lore. I saw an unusual water plant with odd-looking flowers and asked about it. Joey said it was called Golden Club. Later on he picked one flower and chomped the yellow part, saying this was one way to survive in the swamp. The yellow part of the blossom was edible, and he picked more flowers so we could each taste one. It was mildly pungent, like a radish--one would sure have to eat an awful lot of it to get enough nourishment!

Golden Club

The ride was about an hour and a half and took us through so many channels that looked much the same; I wondered how long it would take to learn their intricacies. We were back at the dock before I realized we'd circled back to our starting point. The swamp is beautiful, even the burned-out parts with its charred trunks, though I much prefer to see the cypress alive and dripping with Spanish moss.

Once back, we rushed back to the bridge at Canal Diggers Trail so I could work on a watercolor--we had less than two hours before the park closed, so my sketch is very loose and unfinished. By this time the sun had come out from behind the low clouds and was illuminating the fields of saw palmetto underneath the pines. The best view was from the middle of the bridge, naturally, so I had to stand. As you can see, I propped my sketchbook on the railing of the bridge and hooked the brush holder, expecting the breeze to try to snatch it away.

See more photos of the Okefenokee Swamp on my Flickr Album.