“GA in June?” Monroe asked when he heard I was packing for a canoe trip on the Flint River: “Sounds snakey and buggy.”
He had emailed me an article about Montana’s Blackfoot River, knowing I used to run trips there, and when I wrote back to say thanks, I mentioned that I was looking forward to my upcoming river adventure in southern Georgia. That elicited his unenthusiastic response. Ironically, anyone who paddles and camps on Montana’s Blackfoot River in June, and on many other rivers in the state, knows why the mosquito is said to be the state bird—while I spent five days in June on Georgia’s Flint and did not hear a single telltale whine.
And, no, my trip did not happily coincide with some freak cold spell that pushed into southern Georgia and temporarily shut down insect life. I took a thermometer to record the daily temps, but on the first day carelessly left it in the blazing sun for a few minutes and it suffered a heat stroke. The mercury shot up in the column so hard that, when I brought the thermometer back into the shade, the upper 10 degrees of red stuck to the top, addled, while the rest sank to a wistful 81 and stayed there for the rest of the trip.
As for the Flint being “snakey,” I hoped Monroe would be right. Seeing snakes are one of the reasons I canoe rivers. The highlight on a recent canoe trip made with friends at Merchant’s Mill Pond State Park, in North Carolina, was our coming on not one but five water moccasins sunning together on a island about the size of a couch. But to my dismay, on the Flint I saw no moccasins or snakes of any kind.
What I did see and hear all day every day in the trees and on shore were more kinds of warblers than I knew, along with wood thrushes, wrens, cardinals, owls, red-shouldered hawks, yellow-billed cuckoos, great and little blue herons, fish crows, ospreys, various woodpeckers, and many other members of the feathery tribe. I’m convinced that birds sing, hoot, and call with more gusto on jungly Deep South rivers than they do here in the rocky Appalachians where I live. Monroe is a birder; he would have identified some of the choral voices I didn’t recognize.
As I skimmed along the densely wooded shore, I also heard—sometimes so close and unexpected it made me jump—the loud squalls of wild hogs spooked by my sudden near presence. No wonder they’re called “sounders.”
I didn’t merely hear hogs close by, I saw them too. One afternoon I let the current carry me to a cluster of feral sows and piglets relaxing in plain sight at the river’s edge. Some were lying on their bellies in the mud, others were on their sides or backs, all were wiggling and wallowing, rubbing their snouts in the cool swampy goo and making oozy oinks of contentment, “as happy as a pig in mud.” It looked like Porker Beach. The day was so hot; I almost felt tempted to join them! That is, until watchful Boar Hog, hidden in deep shade on the bank, jumped up at sight of me and with deep, alarming grunts sent the whole harem squealing into the forest, leaving behind the clumps of mud flying through the air.
Two or three times a day I saw alligators basking on the banks, and they would bolt too. But though the pigs ran for safety into the forest, the gators plunged deep into the water out of sight.
In his Flint River User’s Guide, Joe Cook says that some of the biggest alligators in Georgia have been caught and killed on the Flint. Looking into it online, I read that one of these trophies measured 13’ 7” long and weighed almost 700 lbs. A gator that size would have a girth as big as the biggest boar hog. The article said that after the four hunters hooked that particular gator—this happened at night by flashlight—it took them four hours and many bullets before they could haul him into their boat.
Fast-water Swamps
You may recall from the “Sea and Shoal” report I sent out in April that the upper 150 miles of the Flint flow free. On the April trip I canoed half of those miles through the Piedmont with friends Mark and Bobby, and we took out at the GA128 “Hawkins” Bridge, where the river enters the Coastal Plain. On the June trip, going solo this time, I launched at that bridge and explored the remaining 75 miles down to where the current dies in the backwaters of Blackshear Reservoir.
In contrast to the Piedmont reach, I came to no whitewater shoals in the Coastal Plain. This meant there were no deadwater “seas” to plow through either. The river kept flowing the whole way, often slowly, but picking up speed in spots.
If you are paddling a river in the Coastal Plain, here’s a simple way to predict the speed of the current ahead. If the map shows a straight section, the river is going to slow down. The longer the section, the slower the current is going to be. If the map shows a meandering channel ahead, you can count on the river speeding up. The speed seems to be proportional to the twistiness of the meanders. The tighter the river turns, the faster the it will go—until it “flashes tail” through the swampy thickets “like a disappearing snake,” to quote Robert Frost.
It’s as if the river, sensing it can’t reach a certain spot by going in a straight line, is determined to make it there in the same length of time even though the serpentine route it has to follow is three times as long. Since Coastal Plain rivers twist the most where it is swampiest, I think of those stretches as being fast-water swamps.
I paddled the meandering Flint through several swamps, the named ones being Magnolia and Beechwood Swamps. In her Canoeing & Kayaking Georgia, Susan Welander says that “Magnolia Swamp . . . slows the flow of the current.” Don’t believe everything you read. That’s precisely where the Flint speeds up.
Besides faster current, I also found in Magnolia Swamp—no surprise this, since it was Georgia in June—blooming magnolias, their creamy white flowers set off by rosettes of dark green glossy leaves. One morning I plucked a fragrant blossom and kept it in the boat all day. One flower is all it takes to make a bouquet.
Siestas and a Southern Tale
One way I cooled down the hot days of Georgia-in-June was by wearing a straw hat and a light-colored cotton shirt and pants, kept wet with frequent dips. In camp in the evenings, fully dressed meant a t-shirt and boxer shorts.
I also kept cool by canoeing mainly in the mornings and late afternoons, sticking to the corridor of shade near shore. It was pleasant to paddle along while weaving around cypress tree trunks and going under branches. Midday, when the sun stood directly overhead and the trees pulled their shade in tight against the bank, was siesta time. Picking a sandbar grove of willows and river birch, preferably one that caught a breeze, I would set up a mini camp, eat lunch, nap, swim, read, write, study the maps, and explore the surrounding forest. The three to four hours would pass too fast.
Day Three’s siesta was the best. While exploring along the bank, I came to a small multi-trunked tree with a shapely form barely visible inside. “What is that?” I thought. Wedging my head in between two of the trunks for a better view, I found myself face to face with a mannequin—a female mannequin to be exact.
Before the trip I’d been reading Metamorphoses, by Ovid, and sight of the female form imprisoned within the tree immediately brought to mind the Greek myth he tells about Apollo and Daphne. Daphne was a young, beautiful water nymph—nymphs being demi-goddeses who lived in rivers and springs—and when the god Apollo (wounded by one of Cupid’s arrows) saw the lithe beauty and fell in love, she ran for her life—or for her virginity, at least. Of course, her attempt to escape made the girl even more desirable to the infatuated god:
. . . and she was lovely
Even in flight, her limbs bare in the wind,
Her garments fluttering, and her soft hair streaming,
More beautiful than ever. So ran the god and girl,
One swift in hope, the other in terror,
But he ran more swifty . . .
Sensing Apollo hot at her back, Daphne called out to her father, the river god Peneus, “O help me!” And Peneus, hearing his daughter’s cries, at the last instant saved her from Apollo’s grasp by changing her into a laurel tree:
. . . her soft breasts
Were closed in with delicate bark, her hair was leaves,
Her arms were branches, and her speedy feet
Rooted and held, everything gone except her grace,
Her shining.
“Daphne” is the Greek word for laurel, and according to the Greek myth, the metamorphosis that saved the nymph from Apollo’s lust is why we have laurel trees today, with their smooth, shiny, aromatic, evergreen leaves.
I wish I could say that the tree I found with the mannequin inside was a laurel, but it wasn’t. That’s to be expected since I was in Georgia, not Greece. But it was the second-best tree, a water elm, planera aquatica. Water elms grow along the deepest of Deep South rivers, like the Flint, and their trunks arch gracefully out over the current, making pleasant shade to paddle in. They’re one of my favorite trees.
How did a female mannequin become trapped in a water elm in a Flint River swamp? The nearest town where mannequins might be found, Montezuma, lay miles upstream. Standing back and trying to make sense of the situation, I saw what was needed was a Southern myth. So, turning from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to something I remembered in Joe Cook’s Flint River Guide . . .
Once upon a time in 1994, according to Cook, the most catastrophic flood ever recorded on the Flint happened when Tropical Storm Alberto dumped 21 inches of rain on its headwaters. The Flint, rising 30 feet, swept into Montezuma, flooding its stores. Those swirling waters, I now saw in mythic vision, had pulled the mannequin out of the town’s department store, where she modeled feminine attire in the storefront window, and swept her downstream, now the river’s captive. But as Alberto moved on and the Flint felt its power starting to abate, it deposited the mannequin in the water elm for safe keeping, intending—as some day it will—to return for her in a future flood.
Time passed, 27 years to be accurate, and the water elm, lonely in the humid swamp, began to grow protective arms around the stranded mannequin. She was the best thing that had ever come his way, so much more lovely than alligator, snake, or hog. And he filled her hollow torso with rich sediment and roots.
Then I happened along.
I had learned years ago when canoeing with Becky to keep my eyes peeled for river booty. Here was booty indeed!
The water elm did not give his prize up easily. Like a palisade, the tightly spaced trunks defended the treasure within. As I pulled and pushed at the branches, I seemed to hear the tree groaning, “NO! NO! Anything but her!” But I was persistent. Reaching in this way and that, gently tugging, lifting, dislodging the tree’s clinging roots, I eventually extracted the mannequin from his embrace. Then, carrying her back to the river and washing off 27 years of swampy buildup, I saw that in that time the mannequin’s skin had slowly darkened. Just a couple of patches of the original white still showed. So—wedding Greek mythology to a Southern tale—I named her Dusky Daphne.
I placed the mannequin in the bow of my boat and paddled on. But not far.
Was it a coincidence that that very afternoon, around the next bend, in fact, I came to one of the most attractive places I’ve ever seen on any river? It was a smooth, flat, clean sandbar with a willow grove in the middle offering a shady bower for camp. The bower’s back was to the setting sun, and the long willowy branches extending on either side like curtains opened eastward to a beautiful view of the river.
Was it merely a coincidence that I found this perfect, move-in-ready campsite right after liberating the mannequin? I wonder. It could be that, thankful to be free at last from the clutches of Apollo and Alberto, of swollen Flint and lonely Water Elm, Dusky Daphne gave it to me as a gift. River nymphs have that power.
Back home, when I produced the mannequin and gave it to Becky, she promptly renamed it “Kathleen.” I drew a blank at that. Becky explained that in a story called “Romancing the Stone,” set in a long-ago time and place called Hollywood, an actress named Kathleen Turner had just such a divine svelte form.
Nearing the Take-Out
Besides Dusky Kathleen, here’s the rest of my Flint booty list:
1) A “Don’t Tread On Me” confederate battle flag superimposed on the stars and stripes, the image of a rattlesnake coiled in the center, ready to strike—my one snake of the trip. The flag was pinned with tent pegs to the face of a tall bluff fronting the river, and I climbed to retrieve it.
2) A fossilized oyster shell found at the base of another bluff. According to a scientific tale called “Plate Tectonics,” once upon a time millions of years ago the oyster had lived in a sea that covered the Peach State.
3) Two magnolia blossoms still fresh.
4) A half-gallon of delicious tiny yellow tomatoes, several jars of homemade jelly and relish, a walnut pie, and two fried apple pies. I bought them on the drive back home when I stopped at the farmer’s market held every Saturday in the courthouse square in beautiful Monticello, Georgia.
The Moral of This Trip Report?
Check out Georgia in June! —But check it out prudently when it comes to booty. Henry lectured me about the risk I took when I climbed up the 40-foot bluff for that confederate flag, pinned there like a defiant billboard, with bullet holes shot in it for good measure by some Greek redneck or Georgia Apollo. And the risk he had in mind was not my falling 40 feet.
River Trip Log:
Dates: June 14-18, 2021.
Put-in: the GA128 “Hawkins” Bridge, west of Roberta. Take-out: Turkey Creek Campground, off GA27 west of Vienna, owner Zach Griggs. Find it online.
River level: USGS gauge near Carsonville: dropping over the course of the week by half, from 1250 cfs to 650 cfs. A good sliding level.
River Guidebook: Canoeing & Kayaking Georgia, by Suzanne Welander/Bob Sehlinger, Menasha Ridge Press.
Trusty, reliable, and pleasant shuttle drivers: Wanda and John Minnick.