#89 The Dragon
This show originally aired on May 3, 2007 and then again on May 22, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.
May 22, 2008
They call it The Dragon, headwaters to the Piankatank, a sinuous flow of water through marsh and wetland that bisects the Middle Peninsula of Virginia. You should not attempt to paddle this river without local knowledge, everyone says, before they add ominously, “or you will get lost.”
But we won’t get lost because today we’re with the Friends of Dragon Run, an organization whose mission is to protect the adjacent lands through which the Dragon flows. After the initial purchase of 200 acres, additional acres over the years have been either bought by the Friends or its partners including The Nature Conservancy and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. And while they’re at it, the Friends offer public paddles several times each spring and fall through the twisting turns of bald cypress, beaver impoundments, and a rich diversity of wetland flora and fauna, for folks just like us.
It’s another glorious budding spring morn, intermittent clouds, washing cumulous and gray across the sky in front of the sun, creating welcome patches of cool air interspersed with twarm. Three canoes and 8 kayaks, we put-in at the private landing at some of the only high ground in the area, called The Big Island. Where we enter the wetlands, the water is the color of tea and rich with minerals, having been formed and fed over the centuries into what is now tupelo-cypress swamp. At the put in, the stream is a generous twenty feet wide, but soon slims down to a mere five feet and then back to ten. As our winds through this wetland wonderland, the banks are replaced by emergent plants, floating fields of arrow arum and pickerel weed dressed here and there with yellow pond weed fairly bursting to flower, the heavy round buds just starting to open.
This week, the feather foil is also emerging in proud display, like a monument to all that is ripe in spring. The feather-like fronds lie at the water’s surface, a delicate lace swirl from which erupts a stocky green stalk, from which a small explosion of tiny flowers in a perfect circle erupts at the top. With so much to admire, it takes awhile to notice that all is not well in this habitat. Also contributing to the green are dense mats of knotweed, acres of which are choking out the natives, and at the same time slowing our travel.
There are other clues that point to imbalance. A sign posted by the Virginia Department of Health warns of contamination in the tissue of fish caught from the stream. Don’t eat more than two fish a month, it says, because Dragon Run is listed with unusually high concentration of mercury. And, just like the tannic waters of Lake Drummond along the southern border of Virginia, there’s something about the chemistry of this kind of water that absorbs significant and harmful quantities of mercury from the atmosphere, fixing it in the water and the tissues of its resident aquatic life.
Our crooked path carries us through both open and dense stands of cypress that are home to the prothonotary warbler, as well as bald eagle, osprey and blue heron. We see one of each, as well as the small fish fry at the bottom of their food chain. The journey is a feast for my eyes that have been too long focused indoors on computer screens. Each serving offers yet another shade of green, the texture of life and vista unspoiled.
As we emerge from our boats at the takeout on Route 603, we are wobbly, not just from sitting in boats for four hours, but altered by the experience of passing through something so rare. In fact, this wilderness has been ranked by the Smithsonian Institute as second in ecological significance out of 230 areas throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed. No one knows how Dragon got its name, but it seems an apt for a wetland that is filled with danger, but seduces with magic, and as we depart with boats atop cars, I am not in a hurry to shake its spell.