Swamp in a QUAGMIRE.

The Great Dismal's ancient trees and elusive wildlife have endured for centuries. But can they survive when civilization intrudes?

The April waters of the Great Dismal Swamp are so cold my shins ache. Thankfully, my flooded boats trap water against my skin like a scuba diver's wetsuit so my feet stay relatively warm. With countless roots and fallen logs hidden under the brown, knee-deep water, each step is a calculated risk. And numb feet would turn a possible fall into a certainty.

In front of me, Bryan Poovey, an officer at Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, travels a serpentine route through a flooded maze of trees and poison ivy vines to an ancient cypress, one of the swamp's oldest and largest trees. I could have borrowed his hip boots and wandered in to find it myself, but I haven't forgotten his embarrassed admission of becoming lost after venturing only 30 yards into the swamp.

"If you don't have a compass and if you can't see the sun, it's just a big, green maze," says a grinning Poovey. "It all looks the same."

From the inside, perhaps. But the Great Dismal Swamp, which spans 109,000 acres in Virginia and North Carolina, is but a boxy shell of its former self. When Europeans arrived, the Dismal stretched unbroken from Norfolk south to the Albermarle Sound in North Carolina and from the Suffolk Escarpment eastward to the dune lines of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was so vast and so thick that many who entered never returned. A young Robert Frost, despondent over a broken heart, came here to "disappear" but changed his mind. As the November night fell over the swamp, Frost had a change of heart and headed for home the next day.

Bending low at the waist and squatting down, I scramble beneath a massive fallen tree, clutching my camera to my chest to keep it from being dunked. Each step sends a cloud of leaf matter swirling to the surface, giving the water its distinctive brown color. Waiting on the other side, Poovey offers an observation wrapped in his western North Carolina accent. "Normally it's not this deep. But beavers have plugged up one of the ditches, so this area has flooded. It should get shallower as we get farther in."

As we step around a thick bush, a small opening appears and a massive cypress rises high out of the swamp. Poovey climbs onto its island-like base and runs his hands across the bark, his eyes scanning two parallel marks cut deep in the wood. "There's been a bear here."

A quick check on the opposite side shows a trunk so marked and cut it looks like a cat's scratching post. Poovey points to a hollow spot about 30 feet up where a large branch has broken away to reveal a hollow trunk. "I bet she's got cubs up there."

For centuries the Dismal was considered a wasteland, a wet, forbidding place good only for clouds of mosquitoes, misery, and hunting. Today, it's recognized as home to black bear, bobcats, endangered species, and the threatened Atlantic white cedar. It's also a critical stopover point for migratory songbirds.

The Dismal is perhaps most of all a survival story, a triumph of nature's determination over man's persistence. But although humans are awakening to its importance as an ecosystem, the fight to save the Dismal is not yet won.

Since the earliest days of settlement, folks wanted to drain the Great Dismal Swamp and convert its rich, black soil to farmland. George Washington saw its fertile soil and massive trees as an economic opportunity and helped establish the Dismal Swamp Land Company to begin draining and lumbering operations. A five-mile-long ditch, dug by slaves, was cut through the swamp from near Suffolk to Lake Drummond. The ditch, which to this day bears Washington's name, was used to float out cut logs and drain the western reaches.

The swamp was so rich in trees and so vast in size that logging operations continued in its heart from the 1700s up to 1973. The entire swamp is thought to have been logged at least once as drainage ditches and roads eventually crisscrossed the area. After 200 years, the Great Dismal Swamp has been drastically altered, reduced by man to an island of wildness boxed in by farms, cities, ditches, and highways.

What remains is now found almost entirely within the borders of Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, formed in 1974 after Union Camp Corporation donated 49,100 acres to The Nature Conservancy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which operates the refuge, has gradually acquired adjacent property so that the refuge now boasts 109,000 acres across Virginia and North Carolina. On the southern end, a North Carolina park adds another 14,000 acres to the ecosystem. Still, the swamp is just a fraction of its original size, its northern and eastern borders having retreated beneath the plow and the bulldozer.

The Dismal supports a hundred different bird species nesting within the refuge; another hundred are known to use the area. I climb an old fire tower in the middle of the refuge, treating my ears to the seemingly endless variety of birdsong rising from a thick, green canopy that stretches as far as the eye can see. Look almost straight down at the foot of the tower, and only occasionally does a glint of sun reflect off the water and filter back up through the leaves. Otherwise, the vast expanse of water beneath the trees is completely hidden from view.

Time seems to slow as a warm sun falls on my face and a gentle breeze stirs the treetops far below the metal step where I sit. Overhead, hawks circle in a rising thermal against a Carolina Blue sky. The treetops sway beneath an explosion of spring growth that has created more shades of green than the mind can absorb.

But herein lies one of the problems facing the swamp. The view should be almost a monochrome of the dark greens of Atlantic white cedar and cypress. The draining and the drastic changes man has made in the Dismal's hydrology have created a drier swamp. Those drier conditions favor red maple, which has spread so much it threatens to drive out the last of the Atlantic white cedar and other species.

Historically, water levels in the swamp rose and fell in a fairly predictable pattern, barring drought and hurricanes. The Dismal is at its wettest during the fall and winter, when trees are dormant. Except for ponding in isolated areas, the average depth is 8-12 inches. In the spring and summer, as trees leaf out and ground vegetation absorbs vast amounts of water, the swamp dries. This wet/dry cycle has existed for centuries, leading to the diversification of tree species within the swamp. But when man began ditching and building roads, the swamp's natural hydrology was wrecked, its critical wet/dry cycle damaged. And because the refuge is bordered by many privately owned ditches, the Great Dismal Swamp continues to retreat and dry out.

That hydrology-wrecking network of roads and ditches breaks the swamp into large, discrete blocks, and the Fish and Wildlife Service is controlling water levels within each block using special devices installed in refuge-owned ditches. Water levels, besides being a factor in determining which tree species survive, are critical when deciding when to begin controlled burning operations. With up to 6 feet of accumulated peat in the swamp floor, any fire that reaches it can be almost impossible to extinguish if water levels are too low. But controlled burns are important to the Dismal's continued comeback. They reduce wildfire damage, help fire-dependent species propagate, and remove competing species like red maple.

The Service also is replanting recently acquired clearcuts and farmland with almost 230,000 young trees purchased with help from AMERICAN FORESTS. The AMERICAN FORESTS' Global ReLeaf Forest being planted there this year, a mix of various oaks and Atlantic white cedar--280,000 trees in all--will help restore the Dismal's biodiversity. It's hoped that selected clearings, combined with proper water management and plantings, will keep Atlantic white cedar from being pushed out of the refuge.

Trees aren't the only form of life being pushed around. The swamp remains home to about 300 black bear, despite the proximity of Norfolk, Virginia, and Virginia Beach, major metropolitan areas just out of earshot. The bear population is large enough, and the swamp small enough, that young bears are forced to leave the refuge to find a home for themselves. Many meet an untimely end when they attempt to cross the numerous highways nearby. The four lanes of Route 17, a popular road to the Carolina beaches that runs along the eastern side, are particularly deadly, not only for bears but for any creature bold enough to attempt crossing.

Making matters worse for the bears is the isolation forced upon them. Cut off from similar populations to the west, their gene pool is stagnating and experts worry they will have saved habitat for the swamp's largest mammal only to have the bears disappear from inbreeding.

One thing that never seems to disappear is controversy over the best way to manage the swamp. Homeowners on its eastern and northern fringes blame occasional flooding on the refuge, not realizing the swamp actually helps mitigate flooding by slowing and absorbing runoff. Local government officials complain that controlled burns foul the air, apparently ignoring the threat of uncontrolled wildfires among the trees or in the peat beds. Within FWS, there's debate over managing the swamp as a wetland or as a forest. Even the wildlife is under attack because wandering bears appear on manicured lawns and in the headlights of fast-moving cars. And because landowners still prize farmland over swampland, drainage ditches remain and the logger's chainsaw is still heard.

Despite all the abuses man has heaped upon the Dismal, it is still a place of wildness on the doorstep of ever-increasing urbanization. Besides bear, it's home to river otter, deer, bobcat, endangered species such as the canebreak rattlesnake and the log fern, and many other animals not usually thought of as living so close to an urban environment. And it's a critical stop for neotropical songbirds migrating along the Atlantic flyway, making the Dismal a haven for birdwatchers. Luckily, local governments are beginning see the swamp's value as an ecotourism destination. While the Great Dismal Swamp may remain a forbidding and difficult place for man, perhaps a belated appreciation of its many benefits will allow it to finally shed its "dismal" reputation.

RESTORING THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP

AMERICAN FORESTS is planting 280,000 oak, cedar, cypress, and tupelo across 1,800 acres the National Wildlife Refuge system recently acquired in the Great Dismal Swamp. The trees are part of AMERICAN FORESTS' plan to reforest the recently clearcut site with approximately 1 million trees planted over several years. The land, which falls within the Chesapeake Bay watershed, is not regenerating properly due to its massive size. A number of animals and waterfowl will benefit from this project, including black bear and the endangered southeastern short-tailed shrew. Partners in this project are the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, NC Department of Forestry, and Ducks Unlimited. To contribute to this project, call 800/545-TREE, visit our website at www.americanforests.org, or write: PO Box 2000, Washington, DC 20013.

Tim Wright is a freelance photojournalist in Richmond, Virginia.