only by persevering. Back when these 

 forests were virgin, the trees were much 

 smaller and less appealing than the bald 

 cypress bordering rivers that drained the 

 more fertile soils of the Piedmont, such 

 as the Cape Fear, says Cecelski. 



Logger Nelson Squires, who runs a 

 hardwood mill near Kelly, says plenty of 

 solid cypresses were overlooked. The 

 grain is "almost honeycomb-like" and 

 makes beautiful paneling, he says. But 

 Squires wouldn't lay an ax on them. 



"They've been through a lot; 

 they're tough," says Squires, who has 

 given The Nature Conservancy a con- 

 servation easement along several acres 

 of old-growth below Three Sisters 

 Swamp. "It means a lot to go in there 

 and know that you can ride up and down 

 and have it look like it did when the first 

 settlers came over. I hope it's that way 

 500 years from now." 



Squires has granted the first Black 

 River easement of this kind to The Na- 

 ture Conservancy. He still maintains 

 ownership of the land and can hunt, fish 

 and even build a pier if he wants to. But 

 the trees stay put. Squires favors the 

 reclassification of the river and says he 

 supports any effort to keep it clean. 



"I would fight tooth and toenail to 

 keep industry from putting pollutants in 

 the water," he says. 



With the permission of the Cone's 

 Folly caretaker, we pitch our tents at the 

 edge of a large oval cove. It envelops us 

 under a moonless sky that night, as Scott 

 Taylor, his camera and I investigate in 

 our canoe. In daylight, we had discov- 

 ered a photogenic family of "hairy 

 swamp gnomes," Taylor's moniker for 

 the cypress knees that protrude from the 

 water and encircle the trunks like sentry 

 guards. We find them again with the 

 wide beam of a flashlight, a few sub- 

 merged ones glowing like coals in the 

 tannin-stained water. Some speculate 

 that these roots help the inundated cy- 

 presses take in oxygen. And the broad 

 buttressed trunks — sometimes span- 

 ning 15 feet across — help the 

 shallow-rooted giants keep their foot- 

 hold in the wind. 



My mom would say these trees are 

 "in their element," and she's right. I re- 

 call Stahle's explanation that in drier 

 soils, the sluggish cypresses often can't 

 compete with other trees; they are 

 overtopped by faster-growing hard- 

 woods. But able to tolerate saturation, 

 they find their niche in the swamp. And 

 because the sensitive responses to rain- 

 fall and drought are echoed in its growth 

 rings, bald cypress is a premier species 

 for studying climate history worldwide, 

 Stahle says. 



This was once thought implausible 

 because the trees grow in water. Clima- 

 tologists once focused mostly on trees in 

 the arid Southwest. But apparently cy- 

 press responds to both the quality of the 

 water as well as quantity, says Stahle, 

 noting that rainfall tips the balance of 

 nutrients in the swamp water. 



On a night like this in July, we'd be 

 deafened by a chorus of frogs and sucked 

 anemic by mosquitoes. But we hear only 

 our paddles slicing the surface and one 

 loud whip of a sleepless, large-winged 

 bird 50 feet up. I imagine the ghosts of 

 the extinct Carolina parakeet in nearby 

 hollow tree roosts. The green and yellow 

 bird, North America's only native parrot, 

 is thought to have been the only agent of 

 dispersal for cypress upriver. The heavy 

 seed-cones of bald cypress bob down- 

 stream on the current. But only the para- 

 keet, which ate the ripe kernels, helped 

 the trees spread upriver and between 

 river basins. The brilliant bird faded from 

 existence by the early 1900s. 



The temperature barely dips to 

 freezing that night, but the wakeup air at 

 Squalling Bluff is brisk. A trio of South 

 River canoeists catch up to us as we 

 paddle toward our rendezvous at the 

 N.C. 53 bridge another five miles below. 

 A deer sounds reveille, cracking the un- 

 derbrush as it canters along the west 

 bank. The wind is up, and we skim 

 ahead to see the flat-topped relics of the 

 old-growth cypress swamp in the morn- 

 ing light. Their straight stems have 

 sloughed off their lower branches with 

 age and pushed upward — sometimes 

 80 feet or more — into a squashed, flat 



canopy. Scott remarks that they look like 

 neurons or ganglia scratching the sky. 



Along the banks, we admire the 

 stick houses of beavers but catch no 

 glimpse of their occupants. The noctur- 

 nal creatures work prodigiously from 

 dusk to dawn, reclaiming wetland 

 habitat. 



Farther downstream, a lone green 

 tree frog sits motionless like a bell pep- 

 per in the leafless brush. The creature 

 marks the entrance to one of the fingers 

 of Three Sisters Swamp. We slip into the 

 narrow slough and into the past. I imag- 

 ine the face of King Arthur's venerable 

 Merlin in the old trees' twisted grain and 

 his beard in the garland of Spanish moss. 

 But two old highway signs — "Detour" 

 and "Stop" — hang like anachronisms 

 from a couple of cypress trunks, vaulting 

 me back to the present. 



With Cecelski's guidance, we ex- 

 plore elder trees in a large cavity known 

 as Balsa Lake, fed by the river's lower 

 narrows. In this voluminous cove, Stahle 

 and his associate cored the first rugged 

 cypress, 1,200 years old. 



The Black is, on this day, a comfort 

 to me. Like Squires, I want its beauty to 

 be known to future generations. And like 

 so many people have said to me these 

 past few months, there is peace of mind 

 in knowing it is here, even when you are 

 somewhere else. 



A few miles upstream, just above 

 Ivanhoe, Stacy "Red" Butler and his 

 wife Claire keep the keel of the small 

 steamer Delta as their link to yesteryear. 

 Its mooring was just downhill of their 

 cabin at Delta Landing. Claire fishes for 

 supper in the river — channel cats, bull- 

 heads and striped bass. Red grows fields 

 of millet, com and milo for the flock of 

 almost 200 Canada geese and mallards 

 he raises on a nearby pond. The birds are 

 somewhat tame, and Red tries to protect 

 them from local hunters with signs 

 posted in the swamp. He raised an or- 

 phan fawn, bottle-feeding her in infancy. 

 Until she died recently of old age, he 

 would "call her up" from the woods to 

 offer cookies and melons. 



"I think the deer out here all think 



8 MARCH/APRIL 1994 



