Our Dismal Swamp Adventure
Jim and I have been talking about this very trip for a long time. Loopers who do the Dismal Swamp Canal Cut from Elizabeth City North Carolina to Chesapeake Virginia are badasses! It’s a daunting little passage, with shallow water, a couple of Locks, one up 8 feet and one down 12 feet. It’s skinny, and scary, and if you have to pass a boat coming the other way, your butt might pucker a little bit. There are logs to dodge and shit you can’t see below your boat. When you smack said “stuff”, it is cringeworthy!
We are now legitimate Loopers for real, for real.
The Great Dismal Swamp, in the North Carolina and Virginia section of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway sounds like a depressing place. Think dark, craggy trees draped with moss, stagnant water and strange noises coming from within.
However, to my surprise, this swamp is not dismal. Somewhat mysterious, perhaps, since swamps tend to be that way - but as we brought our boat through recently I saw butterflies fluttering about and hundreds of Dragonflies swooping into the water to get a drink. The water is mirror like. Everything you see shares it’s own reflection. It is mesmerizing! Clumps of lettuce-like vegetation drifted in patches like new islands along the shore, an all-natural version of a Disneyland safari trip.
The ICW, also known as “The Ditch,” is the inside route for cruisers to go north and south along the east coast without going out into the ocean. It’s the oldest man-made canal in the United States. About 22 miles of its length goes through the Great Dismal Swamp.
Bordered by cypress trees with their weird, almost science fiction looking roots, the 100,000 acre swamp is gently alive.
The average depth of the swamp is only six feet and the water is the color of coffee from the tannic acid of the tree bark. Despite its strange color, the water is pollution-free and bacteria-free. In early times, the water from the swamp was a highly-prized commodity on sailing ships where it was put in kegs and would stay fresh a long time.
The Dismal Swamp section of the ICW was part of a business venture started by people like George Washington. Taking 12 years to hand-dig, the Dismal Swamp Company’s canal was a critical commercial waterway between Virginia and North Carolina. It’s said that investors believed the swamp was to be a Land of Eden, but probably the workers who dug the waterway in sometimes terrible conditions contributed more to its sad name.
Located midway on the canal, the house served as the office of the toll gatherer for commercial and recreational water traffic. At one time the house also stored the mules who towed the barges. During its time “the shack” (as it is called today) was occupied by Union soldiers and also used as a post office.
In more recent times, the Swamp has made headlines. Hurricane Matthew blew through in 2016. They closed the canal because hundreds of trees were toppled into the Waterway and sediment washed into the canal from rain and flooding. This created shoaling along the canal which from what I’ve read, left only a depth of one foot. A little hard to take your boat through a foot of water! Obviously, because we were able to get through, they have done dredging and clearing of the trees that fell. That is not to say, that we didn’t have to stay very vigilant on our trip. There are floating logs to dodge and God only knows what it was we bumped into under our boat, but we did bump something, at least seven different times. Also, keeping the canal closed this past year resulted in a plague of “duckweed”. Duckweed is a marine vegetation that floats on the surface of the water. It is a floating flowering plant without stems” whose “growth rate can be phenomenal.” The closing of the canal for roughly a year likely contributed to the growth of the duckweed. Because the canal was closed, its waters were still and undisturbed. Add to that the summer's heat, the result was an environment in which duckweed thrives.
This is Duckweed. (photo from Google)
The Canal finally reopened in April so we were able to experience this fascinating trip which took us into the State of Virginia and dumped us into the Naval shipping lanes in Norfolk. 30 feet of glorious water! Jim was very happy at that moment! He did a great job getting us through the swamp even though he was being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
Looking back at our trip up the ICW, I would have to say the Dismal Swamp is not so dismal (other than the bugs). In fact, it is a timeless thing of beauty and tranquility. Would we do it again? Nope. Once was enough for the both of us. I do think however, we will never, ever, forget what we saw that day.
I’d like to tell you about something else that warmed my soul to it’s core. In October of 2005, my mother Pat, and father Bob passed away one week apart. It was a very surreal time to say the least, but both were very ill, and as always, God was good.
My mother had Multiple Sclerosis. She lived most of her last 10 years in a chair in her living room, with a beautiful view of the pool and gardens my dad kept immaculate. Dragonflies visited often. Even back when my children were small, when we played in the pool, they would be there with us. My mom loved Dragonflies and many a gift was given to her over the years in the form of a dragonfly. Boxes, jewelry, crystal light catchers that hung precariously inside and out.
Right before my mom died, I asked her how I would know she was still with me. She said “look for me where the Dragonflies are”.
❤️ Kinda gives me goosebumps!
This Dragonfly hung out with me for about 10 minutes She would fly away and return to my hand, over and over again. It was very awesome.
Jim and I talked about having a serious conversation when we reached The Chesapeake Bay. Because we started late into the Great Loop season, we weren’t sure if we could catch up with the other Loopers. We had talked about spending the summer in the Chesapeake Bay Area and then returning to Florida for the winter an then starting the Loop again next year, in late February.
We had the conversation and we both decided that we are going to press forward. We quit our jobs, sold our stuff and moved onto a boat to do Americas Great Loop. We started - and we are going to finish, we hope, God willing, this year, 2018.
No going back now!
❤️ Peace and love
