Interlude: The Little Swamp of Ouabache Trails Park

Interlude:  The Little Swamp of Ouabache Trails Park

March 1 to August 14, 2013

Yes, I love the swampy places.  What is swamp but a great, thick soup of crawling, swimming, creeping, slithering, water-breathing, bubbling, fermenting Life, lurking, barely seen on the edges, blending with the mucky bottom, gliding slowly through barely translucent water, hiding in masses of slimy algae and dotty duckweed.  You can never really be sure what is there, and when you do spot something, it darts away in one clean leap, or swish of a fin, or flick of a swimmeret.  Then there are the sounds – the loud plops, the little drips, the slight sucking noises.  You look and only see the widening circle of ripples, bubbles rising to the surface from somewhere in the mud below, or a cloud of brown sediment, like a watery version of  a puff of smoke, obscuring the source of action.

Large or small, swamps are fascinating, creepy places.  I enjoy visiting a very small swamp at Ouabache Trails Park.  It is just as mysterious a a large swamp – maybe more so.  As I walk across the bridge, over the wetland, over the creek that starts as a spring and meanders down a floodplain between hills and into the wetland, I can already hear sounds emanating from a hidden place.  The deafening chorus of frogs in mating season comes from somewhere over there.  How can it be that it sounds like a million frogs, but I can't see one?  The choirs change through the spring and summer, from the clacketing of Cricket Frogs and the crazy chuckling of Leopard Frogs, to the gunky banjo plucks of Green Frogs and the basso tremors of Bullfrogs.  Yet this loud, raucous little place is not visible from the trail in spring and summer, and only visible as a glimmer through the trees in autumn and winter.

 

It is also a mysterious place because, in order to get there, I have to go uphill and way around, then dip into a wet wooded place where plants are partially buried in mud from spring floods, and then creep through shrubs, tree branches and vines across the squishy surface.  The swamp is not visible until I go through enough of these obstacles and part the final screen of leaf-laden branches and vines to reveal another world.

I do this as quietly as possible, so as to disturb the Life there as little as possible.  I want everything to be intact, remaining as it was in the moment before I appeared.  Sometimes I am successful.  Sometimes a frog stays in place on the mud, a wary eye on me.  

  

Sometimes a water snake stops in the middle of slithering across, pauses, and watches this place from where a snap of a stick was heard.

 My attention turns to something else for a moment.  I look back and there is no sign of the snake.

Paw-paw trees hang over the swamp with their big umbrella leaves, a cluster of two or three pendulous fruits dangling above the water.

 The raccoons will snatch these when they are just ripe.  But, for now their tracks in the mud show that they have been here in the dark and the dawn, searching for crawdads and frogs.

Water Striders skate on the watery swamp surface, in search of much smaller prey, such as mosquito larvae that wiggle just below.

 

What I always look for when I come here is the Water Plantain.  It is not an uncommon plant, but it is striking to see.  This is where I got to know the plant, and this is the only spot where I have found it in Ouabache Trails Park. In the spring, I strain my eyes to find the new beginnings of the plants, and can barely see evidence of them.

  

 Gradually, though, I notice some oval leaves splayed out flat on the surface of the water. They look as if they've been scattered on the water in one general area, yet they are firmly attached to branches and stem below water that are firmly attached by roots to the muddy bottom of the swamp.

  

 Sometime in the first half of the summer, I part the last obscuring tree branches to see a completely different site – a great bunch of large green leaves rising from the water, bending tops toward the sun, shining as if they had all just been polished.  

The next time I visit, new stalks have risen from the centers of the leaf bunches, surrounded by branchlets reaching upward at a 45 degree angle, looking almost exactly like an asparagus that has just begun to branch out.

  

A little later visit reveals, at that last parting of tree and shrub branches, a rising, spreading, airy mass of green and white, as the Water Plantain has burst into a zillion tiny white flowers.

 It all looks like such a celebration of being alive, and this diaphanous mass is so glorious it almost overcomes the sight to great, shining leaves way below.

  Solid, shiny leaves, close to the swamp water, drink in sunlight, producing the energy needed to feed this hilarious burst of bubbly spirit that fills the air above. 

In just a few days, the airy spray is all pale green, as tiny white petals have fallen to the water and ovaries have begun to swell with future Water Plantain seeds.

Nearby, the very straightforward, serious leaves of cattails move directly from swampy bottom to clear air in one direct, single, unbroken, elongated shape.  There are only a few clumps of cattails dotting the swamp and the adjacent wetland, but I wonder if they will, eventually, become dominant here, their ranks increasing and marching in several directions across the swamp, brown tops quivering like hat plumes.

An old fallen tree lies across the water.  It has been gradually melting into the soup, its topside becoming covered with a thick mat of damp, cushiony moss.  Over time, various seeds have been able to find lodging in the moss.  The old log has sprouted quite a diverse jungle of plant life.  This new world flourishes with the soft, heart-shaped leaves of Wild Ginger, gangly young Paw-paw trees, sprigs of three-leaved Poison Ivy, and many other plants, some almost as tall as the log is long.  Now some animals can thrive here, also – various insects, moisture-seeking salamanders, visiting birds, climbing snakes.

I leave the swamp, working my way back through the wet, wooded places and back to the trail.  I get down to the low part of the trail, between the hill and the bridge.  This area, including the trail itself, tends to flood, creating mini-swamps.  Someday, this collection could join to become one larger swamp.

 

  More frogs inhabit these places.  They squeak and plop in the water as someone passes.  Frogs and tadpoles scoot with amazing speed into the shelter of water-drenched grasses, sedges and horsetails at the far edge.

  I have a goal of seeing that a boardwalk is built over this stretch of trail, enabling people to enjoy using it while no longer disturbing wildlife, widening the trail to avoid flooded parts, or causing more erosion.  Maybe this will also allow all of the mini-swamps to become one.

I walk along the wet trail, surrounded by Horsetail, Spicebush, Buttonbush, Monkeyflowers and Tall Bellflower.  I go back to the creek and my favorite view of it winding through the wetland.

 A short branch of this creek feeds into the Little Swamp.  

  

Blue-Fronted Dancer damselflies rest on the sandy creek side, then dart away, glistening iridescent in the sun. 

 Male Blue-Fronted Dancer

 Female Blue-Fronted Dancer

 Red-Headed Woodpeckers are busy in the leafless, hole-ridden trees that stretch up above the wetland.

  A Toad Bug crawls off of the edge of the creek and floats awhile in the current.

A Wood Duck has been walking in the creek, looking for food.

 All of these beings can slip into the Little Swamp – glide in on the creek branch, fly through the overhanging trees, land on the plant-filled rotten log, or hop over the mud through cover of grasses, flowering plants and saplings. 

I cannot enter the swamp quite so gracefully.  But, I will visit again, trying to think and move like a swamp being, seeing what appears to me the next time I part the screen of leaves and vines at the edge of the Little Swamp.

P.S.  Here is a plant that grows in swamps, including the Great Marsh of the Indiana Dunes:  Sagittaria latifolia, or Common Arrowhead.  But, this was found growing in a ditch along Lower Fort Knox Road, on the way to Ouabache Trails Park.  I hope that someday it will also turn up in the Little Swamp.