We used to call it the Congaree Swamp, then it was the Congaree National Monument. Now it is Congaree National Park. It is actually a flood plain with some of the tallest trees in the world, tupelo, loblolly pines, American beech and bald cypress with their minions of cypress knees sprouting up from the Dorovan muck. The clay and dead leaf muck is eight feet deep and nourishes the forest.
You can get there from I-77 and I-26 about 10 miles south of Columbia, but I take Assembly to Bluff Rd from downtown and drive 12 miles through the Cowasee Basin down back roads to the park. It is one of our last days of summer like weather, early and perfect, blue and gold, but anticipating 87 degrees in the afternoon.
I take the Weston Lake Loop trail which is about 4.5 miles. Much of it is a boardwalk over the Dorovan muck, and then a footpath through the high sheltering trees along brown, leaf strewn Cedar Creek. Ducks fly up from the water as I approach. In a sunny spot, Great Blue spreads his wings and settles in the branches of a tree over the water. I pass an old still left by Moonshiners long ago. Here along the creek are two measuring poles indicating that now the water is only two feet deep, but the levels can go up to 12 feet during flooding.
An antlered stag moves quickly across my path. He is thick and grey and furried, not especially afraid of me. This is his home, not mine. I hear the deep hoot of an owl and call back, but he is silent. Woodpeckers tap and birds chirp high in the trees as I approach the boardwalk and pier over Weston Lake, an oxbow of the Congaree. I have been here before and saw countless turtles, yellow bellied and snapping just floating up and down below. No turtles today, but coming down from the pier, a black piglet, the size of my cocker spaniel, jumps up and runs to the safety of his family. Later the ranger tells me that a piglet is called a shoat and the group of boars is called a sounder. There are six or eight shoats and as many large boars. Most of them are black, or dark gray and brown, but there is one middle sized boar that is bright red like a fox. Long ago, the ancestors of these pigs were brought here, some from Germany, for hunting. The ranger tells me that now they are infested with pseudo rabies and brusolosis. There is a management plan for them. They look at me and walk a few steps away, rooting up the ground.
Nearing the Park Center again, I talk to a German family about the boars and then I meet a Japanese family with two small children dressed in Halloween skeleton costumes under their jackets. The little girl holds my walking stick to inspect it. The little boy talks to Momie-San in English and Japanese. I have had my solitary walk, but now I can hear the loud noise of thousands of quacking geese nearby. It is actually one hundred and twenty school children from Rice Elementary in Hardscrabble having a picnic lunch before they take the trails and see the movie.
High on the wall over the water fountains is a Mosquito Meter, something like the old arrow pointing to the numbered floors an elevator reached. 1 = All Clear 2 = mild 3 = moderate 4 = severe 5 = ruthless 6 = war zone. I take my hiking stick and move the arrow from just over All Clear to between mild and moderate.
The Congaree floodplain was once a wild place where fierce, wild and unbroken slaves escaped from plantations, slave owners and others who tried to capture them. At the nearby place where the Congaree and the Wateree meet, they set up a Maroon village, preserving some of their African culture and adapting to their circumstances.To this day, some of their descendants abide in this beautiful wild place.
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