Quick . . . what National Park lies between the Great Smoky Mountains NP and the Everglades NP?

I have to confess that I didn’t know the answer to that question until a couple weeks ago. 

After completing plans to join our youngest son and daughter-in-law, Dave and Ruth, for Thanksgiving in Columbia SC, Ruth expressed her eagerness for Marge and me to join them for a hike in the swamp—the BIG swamp formed by the Congaree River some twenty miles south of Columbia.  It was then that I learned about one of our newest national parks: the Congaree NP, which is mostly a designated wilderness area of some 15,000 acres and filled with all the creatures that one might imagine occupying a Southern swamp.  Marge was not too eager to venture into the realm of swamp denizens until she heard that we would be walking a two-mile, elevated boardwalk—”elevated” being the key word!

So walk it we did—on a splendid, cool but sunny day on Tuesday.  We had no major wildlife encounters but did enjoy the birdlife in the now leaf-bare deciduous trees that make up one of the tallest of such canopies in the world.  Although midday in the late fall in a deciduous forest is not dramatic, the silences and solitude of such a place were themselves a joy. 

When I’m back at my home computer, I’ll share some photos which should give you an idea about the nature of the park—which will be more impressive once the drought in the Southeast has run its course and the cypress roots will again protrude from the water like the knees of bony teenagers bathing in short tubs.

Just outside the park, we stopped at a small church—Baptist, or course—to take photos of its old cemetery overtopped with live and red oaks drapped, in picture-book fashion, with Spanish moss.  One tombstone stood out with its curious epitaph:

MEMORY
OF
MARGARET GLENN
BORN–1878
DIED  MAY 24  1940
SHE HATH DONE
WHAT SHE COULD

It didn’t seem at first to be very respectful of Margaret, but when you think about how different our civilization would be if all of us did what we could—in the Baptist understanding of our duties before God—the world would indeed demonstrate more of its original goodness. 

God bless your soul, Margaret Glenn, for doing what you could.

See you outdoors!

Dean