Brief-Form Post #57: Reflection In & On Beaverdam Tupelo Swamp — Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge!
I am pleased to add the 57th of my GBH Brief-Form Posts (Less than five minutes to read!) to my website. I don’t want my enthusiasm for thoroughness and detail to discourage readers. So, I will occasionally publish these brief Posts.
I returned to Beaverdam Swamp Boardwalk on the afternoon of January 4, 2026. In the vicinity with time to spare, I leisurely sauntered the half-mile to the boardwalk terminus at the creek. The Boardwalk transects a National Natural Landmark within the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge. This ancient tupelo forest is one of my very special natural places in North Alabama, just a twenty-minute drive from my home. I visit it 3-4 times annually to witness changes across the seasons.
I offer a few observations, reflections, photos, and three brief videos. A mixed hardwood stand occupies the gravel trail approaching the boardwalk, which crosses the tupelo swamp.
I recordedd this 58-second video beside a handsome green ash tree prior to entering the boardwalk.
I’ll spare you a detailed narrative. The elevated wooden walkway snakes through the ancient stand. I’ve seen the swamp nearly flush with the underside of the decking, perhaps 18″ higher than the current level.
We’ve received almost three inches of rain since then. I will visit once more before winter’s flush ends.
This is my 59-second video of the swamp from the boardwalk.
The swamp is rich with reflections and ripe for the kind of mind, heart, body, soul, and spirit reflecting that most of us enjoy but too often push aside in the hurry and scurry of life and living.
The buttressed tupelo trunk, draped in resurrection fern, etends downward in reflection and reaches high above.
The tupelo forest canopy is uniformly high. There is little understory or intermediate crowns, contrary to most of our upland forests..
A view upward reveals only the main canopy crown.
Darkness comes early early January. By 3:30 PM the sun was dipping to its winter nadir at 30 degrees south of west.
I recorded this 60-second video at the Beaverdam Creek terminus of the boardwalk.
The creek empties into Lake Wheeler’s Limestone Bay within a mile of the deck.
Death and Decay
A hollowed tupelo stands along the creek just upstream of the boardwalk terminus. Life and death dance breast to breast. One (always the same) will ultimtely prevail, returning tons of organic matter to the grand cycle of swamp and creek birth, decay, death, and rebirth.
Oyster mushrooms adorn a downed log. This common decomposer fungi, I’ve learned by observation, aggressively colonizes dead and dying trees, seeming to prefer hickories, hackberry, and elms.
I also found an aging lions mane mushroom on a heavily decayed stump.
This magnificent National Natural Landmark never disappoints, whether deepest January or during the dog days of August. I relish being so close to a special natural place
Robert Service, a Brit who spent time in the Far North 125 years ago, wrote in Spell of the Yukon:
It’s the great, big, broad land’way up yonder,
It’s the forst where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the silence that fills me with peace.
The Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge is not a great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder, but it does grasp me in its beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration:
There’s a land–oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back–and I will.
The freshness, the freedom, the farness–
Oh God! how I’m stuck on it all.
Closing
I accept the challenge of distilling these Brief-Form Posts into a single distinct reflection, a task far more elusive than assembling a dozen pithy statements.
The Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge is not a great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder, but it does grasp me in its beauty, magic, wonder, awe, and inspiration:
There’s a land–oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back–and I will.
Nature’s special treats await our discovery, our understanding, and our interpretation!
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