Swamp Safari

At treetop level, we test the protective railing of the observation tower overlooking Chesser Prairie, a wide-screen, shore-to-horizon, full-color expanse of lily-dotted marshes, ponds, gray-green trees, Spanish moss, frogs, birds, snakes, Jurassic alligators and carnivorous plants in southeastern Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp.

The crowd on the creaky platform numbers several dozen, including a few off-duty local firefighters who are joking and leaning out toward the wind-dappled water 50 feet below. “Fear Is Not an Option” their T-shirts proclaim.

A zoology class on a field trip from Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., has set up tripods and fancy telescopes to examine the details of what is called “prairie” in swamp language only. In fact, “swamp” is something of a misnomer too. The water is not brackish or stagnant, not even muddy; it would be clear but for the tannin from decaying vegetation that colors it brown.

The observation tower stands on Chesser Island, a flat, sandy thicket of palmetto, oak and pine settled around 1858 by a hardy pioneer, William T. Chesser. His homestead, which is opened occasionally as a “living museum” attraction, is among the most accessible areas of the 620-square-mile Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

In the distance, the late afternoon sun’s rays pick out other islands, turtles warming themselves on fallen logs and blue herons and egrets getting their supper. Pointing, one firefighter identifies the tree-lined course of the Suwannee Canal, a failed late-19th century attempt to drain the swamp and harvest its forests of rot-resistant cypress, red bay, pine and other hardwoods.

Shading his eyes, Juniata biology teacher Chuck Yohn tracks the slightly graceless approach of a long-necked, short-legged water bird as it banks and sets down in a stream not far away. “Look,” he cries, “an anhinga.” “A juvenile,” adds a student with three cameras around her neck.

“An alligator,” Yohn continues, pointing farther west. “You can see its eyes in the sun, about three-fourths across the lake.”

A shirtless male student--his wiry back pointedly turned toward the resplendent panorama--mutters that what he wants is to eat some gator. I tell him that I enjoyed fried alligator tail the night before at a restaurant in nearby Waycross. He rolls his eyes and mockingly asks if it tasted just like chicken.

His buddy--sporting a butterfly tattoo and a ragged Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt--tops me, claiming to have once eaten freshly run-over possum. Seasoned it with lemon and pepper, he says, sounding almost serious.

Their teacher doggedly continues, “See those white ibis over there?”

“Pow, pow,” answers Roadkill, aiming a spray of imaginary bird shot across the primeval marsh.

*

Okefenokee was formed almost 250,000 years ago when the Atlantic shoreline receded, leaving a shallow lagoon trapped behind a sandbar. Abundant rainfall replenishes the swamp, which is headwaters of the Suwanee and St. Marys rivers.

This fragile patch of more-or-less unspoiled natural land in the rapidly developing Georgia coastal plain is home to sandhill cranes with 7-foot wingspreads, diminutive wood ducks, mink, river otters, Florida black bears, white-tailed deer, bobcats, barred owls, 14 families of fish, 20 species of frogs and toads, five species of venomous snakes and an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 alligators.

“Okefenokee,” the white man’s version of Seminole words meaning “land of trembling earth,” refers to one of the swamp’s most characteristic features: Its “land” consists largely of unstable bogs and clumps of floating peat formed from dead trees and plants. Building up and rising to the surface, these waterlogged rafts shelter the seeds of other plants, eventually turning solid enough to support shrubs, wildlife and trees.

More than 431 million board feet of timber were harvested in the two decades of commercial logging early in this century. The refuge was created by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, and logging is forbidden.

All of this meant relatively little to me until recently. Having grown up in south Florida near Everglades National Park, I’d followed Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” comic strip set in Okefenokee (“We have met the enemy and he is us.”). But that was about all I knew of the place.

Then industrial giant E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. announced plans for a 38,000-acre titanium mine on pine forest lands directly bordering the eastern edge of the refuge. Opposition has been fierce, and the plan is now before an independent study committee.

*

Hoping to stay a step ahead of the DuPont juggernaut, I elect to make the six-hour drive from my home in Atlanta to experience as much of the swamp’s variety as possible in a weekend visit. Base camp is the Holiday Inn in Waycross, the region’s commercial center. Hardier visitors rent or pack sleeping bags, canoes and stoves, camping out on specially built alligator-proof platforms and shelters inside the park. Insect-proofing is up to visitors, especially in summer and early autumn when mosquitoes, chiggers, gnats and biting flies are more than a nuisance.

I drive 30 miles south of Waycross to Folkston, and 12 miles more to the Suwannee Canal Recreation Area, eastern gateway to the swamp’s interior and headquarters for boat rentals, fishing supplies and guided tours. Before starting the 4,000-foot boardwalk hike out to the Chesser Island observation tower, I brush up on local lore and nature exhibits at the information center.

A little before sunset, I join about 40 others for a 2 1/2-hour exploration of the swamp in motorized pontoon boats. My boat’s driver-guide, 16-year-old Geoff Crews, points us west on Suwannee Canal, then into Chesser Prairie. The next hour is like floating through a vast lily pond.

In the descending twilight, flocks of white ibis and solitary great egrets comb the reeds and shallows for snails, mollusks, frogs and fish. Overhead, a great blue heron soars. In the distance, I spot what looks like a giant ibis, its head pumping among the cattails as it hops and bounces across the edge of the prairie.

Geoff takes us past alligator after alligator, including one that--as he predicts--jumps aside with a loud splash when the boat approaches. Most of the gators are 6 to 8 feet from nose to tail-tip (Oscar, on display at Okefenokee Swamp Park, measures 15 feet). They recline on wet couches of peat and roots, half hidden under feathery canopies of cypress branches at the edge of deeper water. Though the ungainly beasts look slow and lazy, Geoff says they can move fast when necessary--and hungry. That explains the no-pets rule in the park.

Most experts agree that gators (like Okefenokee’s poisonous snakes) aren’t a threat to full-grown tourists who leave them alone. Females protecting nests and babies are more likely to attack, but unprovoked singles show little interest in humans, and no fatal encounters have been reported in the past few years.

Just after sunset, Geoff turns the boat back toward the dock. Overhead, a yellow half-moon, a shower of stars and a swooping procession of insect-seeking bats punctuate the gray flannel sky. Geoff hands out flashlights. The Southerners in the boat don’t have to ask what to do. “Shining” gators is an old swamp hunter’s trick in which lanterns are used to locate and briefly mesmerize prey.

As Geoff putt-putts the boat close to the canal’s edge, we point our lights into shadowy crevices among the cypress roots. At first, we spot nothing but wet wood, peat, reeds and black ripples.

Then a kid at the front of the boat catches a reflection. In the beam of the flashlight, the alligator’s eyes are like red neon marbles. After that, we see another set of ghostly glowing rubies. And another and another.

My day has been full, and I have a full day tomorrow.

Next morning, I drive to the north end of the refuge and Okefenokee Swamp Park, a private, nonprofit attraction operating on land leased from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This is the swamp experience packaged and sanitized as entertainment: a “zoo” stocked with caged gators, energetic river otters, a lonely bobcat, several bored deer and a frazzled bear; electric trams saved from the Atlanta Olympics, a make-believe pioneer village and a Pogo museum, gift shop and snack bar, serpentarium and country music amphitheater.

A snake show is on in the amphitheater, and while it is informative and entertaining, the advice of an Atlanta friend, a veteran of numerous canoe trips through Okefenokee, comes to mind: “Get out in it and just see it. Basically, just get in a boat.”

I head for Stephen C. Foster State Park on the west side of Okefenokee. Ten minutes before the boat trip, the sky darkens and pours down water like an overturned bucket. I am the only person who has signed up for the 1 p.m. excursion, and naturalist Allison Colvin asks if I want to wait, cancel or get wet. Fifteen minutes later, under clearing skies, we shove off.

*

The 1 1/2-hour trip is the Georgia equivalent of an African safari in which hundreds of lions and thousands of wildebeest and gazelles just happen to pass mere steps from one’s tent. Gators by the dozen--lazing in the sun on peaty shores, floating in lily-pad thickets with only their black eyes and noses above water, lone gators, pairs, trios, groups--we cruise through a medley, an assembly, a congregation of gators. Few of them move. Like flexible submarines, one or two shift shape as we approach, then disappear slowly into the tea-colored water. Others retreat three or four steps as we chug by, then stand their ground.

Colvin says that three or four times more gators were on hand during her morning trip, that this crowd is relatively nothing. But the quick view of what life might have looked like a million years ago is what I came to see. Long past counting reptiles, I grab hold of the boat’s railing as we slow and come about before a ruined bridge of cypress pilings and stakes that once supported a logging railroad.

Around the turn of the century, Colvin says, this was the approach to Billy’s Island, a lively town complete with hotel, movie theater and other amusements for off-duty lumbermen and hunters. After logging ceased, forest fires finished the settlement off.

Aside from cypress stumps, some of them a massive 15 feet across, the stretch of river looks relatively untouched. Moss-festooned cypresses line the uncertain shore. Primeval monsters lurk. People in rented aluminum boats fish for bass and chain pickerel. So do egrets, herons and anhingas.

As we prepare to turn into the canal leading to the marina, I glance back for a final look at the swampland primeval--and spot a canoe bearing two young men, both vaguely familiar. One is shirtless, the other wears a hacked-off Hard Rock T-shirt. Strung out behind them are several more boats bearing Juniata students and zoology instructor Chuck Yohn.

“Did you canoe over?” I call to Yohn, momentarily forgetting that such a trip would take two to four nights.

“Drove,” he replies, “like you.”

Next time, I think, next time I’m going to paddle. Camp out. Sleep under the stars. Or at least ride all the way in a pontoon boat.

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GUIDEBOOK

Gator Aids

Getting there: Connecting service (with one plane change) LAX-Jacksonville, Fla., on Delta, Continental, Northwest, American, United, TWA, US Airways and Southwest; lowest round-trip fares begin at $196, including tax. A car is essential.

Where to stay: Holiday Inn, 1725 Memorial Drive (U.S. 1-23), Waycross, Ga.; telephone (912) 283-4490. Rates: $45-$50, including breakfast; package including tour of Okefenokee Swamp Park, $35.95 per person, double. Days Inn, U.S. 1 at U.S. 301 South, Folkston, Ga.; tel. (912) 496-2514. Rates: $38-$44.

Stephen C. Foster State Park, Route 177, off U.S. 441, Fargo, Ga., rents cottages for $51-$76 per night. State Parks Reservations; weekdays, tel. (800) 864-7275.

Where to eat: Ocean Galley, 421 Memorial Drive, Waycross; tel. (912) 283-8341. The swamp platter has alligator tail, turtle, frog legs and more for $13.95.

Getting wet: Suwannee Canal Recreation Area, Folkston, Ga.; tel. (800) 792-6796. Guided boat tours; boat and equipment rentals. Wilderness canoeing is by permit only.

Stephen C. Foster State Park, Fargo, Ga.; tel. (912) 637-5274. Guided boat tours, boat rentals.

Information: Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Route 2, Box 338, Folkston, GA 31537; tel. (912) 496-7836.