The Congaree Excursion

so today, my friend Josh Hill and i went to the Congaree National Park off SC State highway 48 for a little hike, and on our way we noticed a blinking marquee. this Park being in South Carolina and all, it wouldn't have surprised the either of us to find that this sign was the entrance to a dusty park-ing lot featuring "Awesome Possum" with a dancing cane, a top hat, and a shiny tail. as it turns out we had no reason at all not to be surprised for the blinking marquee simply advertised beer and milk, while the Park entrance ended up being further down highway 48. all in all i was captivated by what i experienced today.

we took a 2.4 mile loop boardwalk trail that ran through a bald cypress, tupelo (too-pee-loh - say it like you mean it) tree forest. the base of the trees were reinforced by their widening foundations while the bald cypress trees were also sturdied by the roots emerging from the swampy terrain like knees, like snorkels, like stalagmites from underneath the floodplain floor. we heard warblers, thrush birds as the dusk fell, and saw a pileated woodpecker busily leaving his impression on a dying American elm.

when we had crossed Weston Lake (instead of Visitor Lake & Senator Lake, the Lakes of our imagination), an oxbow remnant from the days of the uninterrupted Congaree, which merges into the floodplain by eutrophication, we encountered loblolly pines wearing yellow scars on their bark from lightning burns like medals of honor, a moon shining distillery, some sprawling dwarf palmettos, and the swaths from Hurricane Hugo. nearing the end of our wonder-interrupted walk through the Congaree Forest, my friend Josh and i halted beneath loblolly pines averaging 130 feet in height to examine the spectacle that effortlessly rose around us, giving us the same sensation that the dwarf palmettos behind us must have.

turning our gaze back to our brochures (for they were smaller than us and could be wielded in our fists) we perused these lines "The forest canopy at Congaree has been said to be taller than any other deciduous forest on earth, taller than the hardwood forests of Japan, the Himalayas, southern South America, and Europe....You walked in the footprints of the Wateree and Congaree Indians, Francis Marion, and [General] Hampton."