Congaree

Because my mum asked about it, here's Congaree National Park/ Congaree Swamp.

According to the photo folder name, I went to Congaree on May 5th. It's near Columbia, South Carolina, a bit in the middle of nowhere because it is a big damn swamp, but not too far from the airport that you can't hear airplanes flying over. It's a little strange to be walking along in the dead quiet and then hear an airplane.

Although the National Park Service website claims that there are sometimes seen black bears and river otters, I saw neither. I would love to have seen an otter, and I would love to have a picture of a free-range black bear, but I fear that I would have been too petrified with fear to actually take said picture. The only animals I saw were a few squirrels, two snakes, and some small birds. I also heard lots of woodpeckers; that was the predominant sound while I was there. Woodpeckers, as I have observed in the front yard, are a lot bigger than I thought. I was misled by Woody Woodpecker.

The park is on a floodplain of the Congaree River, so it floods quite often, like several times a year. It wasn't flooded when I was there, or else I would have been quite annoyed. There's a nice elevated boardwalk right when you leave the Visitors Center, and then after a while it becomes a regular boardwalk, and then it veers off onto a trail, which after a bit leads to another trail, and so on. I walked the shortest trail, the Weston Lake Loop, which is 4.6 miles. That trail didn't go all the way to the Congaree River, but it went to Cedar Creek and Weston Lake.

It was quiet and peaceful almost the whole time. Since the park is so big, you're not running into other people left and right. Most of the time it was just the sound of the woodpeckers and me crashing about. I feel I'm pretty good on the whole "take only pictures, leave only footprints" deal. And I'm okay with a little bit of nature getting on me. Mostly this takes the form of insects flying into me and/or sucking my blood. Mosquitos love me. Outside the Visitors Center there was a Mosquito Meter. The day I was there the mosquitos were apparently only "moderate." The meter went up to War Zone. Unfortunately, the battery on my camera ran out before I could take a picture of it.

Now, the bad thing about being in a foresty area is that it may look very cool whilst you're there, but that often doesn't translate well into photographs. Most of my pictures basically look like...a bunch of trees. But these trees were in water! Many of the trees are cypress and tupelo, although I would not know these trees if I met them on the street.

Des arbres dans l'eau.

The park reminded me first of the fireswamp in "The Princess Bride"--I kept a sharp lookout for ROUSs--and then later of Jurassic Park. There were palmettos toward the end, but not at the beginning, so that's probably why. There were indeed a few moments when I thought that if I somehow got myself lost (which wouldn't really surprise me) I would be screwed, because there was no cell phone service, and how would the rangers know where I was? Of course, this did not come to pass, but I did think about it.

That, to me, was the most impressive thing about Congaree. It is an area of woodland that remains standing. It shows a glimpse of what this part of the Southeast looked like when the colonists arrived, and what the American Indians were slogging about in. Or possibly they were avoiding living in an area that flooded multiple times a year and was full of mosquitos in the summer. Anyhow, I imagined what it would be like for settlers moving west from Charleston and other coastal areas, coming upon this vast tract of land with no conveniently marked paths to follow. I wonder how many people got lost and died in the swamp. If coming to the New World had been left to me, I might have stayed in Europe, because that was a long, hard voyage, and I hate puking. But if I did make it, I would have been tempted to park it right on the East Coast. Because I can imagine staring into the woods at night and hearing strange noises and being frightened. Which is not so far from what happens on occasion even now. So well done and thank you, aboriginal and colonial Americans, for going across the ocean and through the swamps and over the mountains.

In conclusion, I looked it up, and "Congaree" does not mean a thing that anyone knows of thus far.

Introduction and Ninety Six

At times, I go some interesting places. The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences with my friends and family. I'll relate my mini-adventures visiting new sites or events. I cannot always promise that I will write particularly well, or that these posts will be interesting, or even that I'll update often. But I can promise one thing: pictures. (I hear your mocking gasps of feigned shock. Hush.) And, most likely, pictures of squirrels.

Before I start with today's trip, the answer is that "mjöksiglandi" is an Old Norse descriptive byname found in the Landnámabók. It means "much-sailing" or "far-traveling." So a Norseman ("Viking") called Erik Mjöksiglandi would be Erik the Much-sailing. I don't sail much, so we're going with far-traveling in my case, and even in the grand scheme of things I haven't traveled that much. Anyway, as far as I can tell, it doesn't mean anything in any modern Scandinavian language. And I will leave you to your own devices about the 1812.

This morning I woke up and decided to go to Ninety Six, South Carolina. Ninety Six is both a town and a National Historic Site, and its name comes from the fact that early inhabitants believed their town to be 96 miles from Keowee, a Cherokee town. Apparently it wasn't really 96 miles, but the name remains. Ninety Six was the site of the first Revolutionary War land battle that took place south of New England, the Battle of Ninety Six, which was fought in November 1775. In 1781 patriots laid siege to the Star Fort, although they did not succeed in taking it from the British. I attribute this to the Continental Army's lack of trebuchets. They did, however, have Polish military engineer General Thaddeus (Tadeusz) Kosciuszko, who led the attacking Americans in building trenches that allowed them to get within 40 yards of the Star Fort. (Random fact I just stumbled across via Google: There is apparently a Kosciuszko National Park in New South Wales, Australia.) Poor Kosciuszko. Lafayette gets all the props for coming over to help fight and Kosciuszko's name is barely recognized as a contributor to American freedom.

The "Star Fort" I keep mentioning is an eight-sided fort built by Loyalists to guard the area. What's there now is the earthwork foundation; I presume there was an actual wood fort there at some point, but they were a little lacking in details about that part. It's hard to tell in most of my pictures what any of the fortifications are--the topographical differences don't show up well, and it mostly looks like a lot of grass--so here's a drawing from one of the park signs.
Ninety Six, although it seems kind of in the middle of nowhere today, was strategically important because of the pre-Revolution roads that ran to Charleston, Augusta, Georgia, Keowee, and Island Ford on the Congaree River. Parts of those roads are still there; they're sunken and grown over with grass and pretty cool. I can tell I'm going to be the kind of mom who annoys her children by saying, "Look, kids, people used this road BEFORE THIS WAS A COUNTRY!" and I'd think it was cool and they'd roll their eyes. But it is cool.

The Charleston Road. PEOPLE USED THIS BEFORE THE UNITED STATES WAS A COUNTRY, KIDS!Better directions than I got from Mapquest...

Besides the Star Fort, there's a stockade fort at the other end of the park. There's actually a building there, but it's not terribly impressive. There is also an 18th-century house that they moved to the park that's done up like a tavern, an "unidentified cemetery" that's probably a post-Revolution slave cemetery, and a few miles of trails. I must confess that I'm a loose constructionist when it comes to trails. If it's obvious that someone has walked there, and it looks like it'll go somewhere interesting, I'll walk on it. And that's how I ended up walking on the horse trail for a while.

I wasn't terribly super impressed by Ninety Six, but it was nice to see. I expected more historical stuff, more buildings and graves and stuff. But I did learn a lot, including what it's called when you make an obstacle using trees with sharp pointy bits facing the enemy (an abatis). Even if I hadn't learned that, it would almost have been worth it just to get this picture on the drive home:
Next time will be one of the following: Congaree National Park, Magnolia Cemetery, or Colonial Days at the Living History Park here in town. But Colonial Days will definitely be up next weekend, as that's when it is.