Exploring the Big Woods: A Guide to the Last Great Forest of the Arkansas Delta by Matthew D. Moran (University of Arkansas Press, October), 180 pages, $21.95 paperback, $12.99 Kindle
Why would anyone want to go into what's left of an old swamp? We'd get lost, drown and be eaten by mosquitoes.
Silly, mosquitoes don't feed on drowned people. Anyway, you can't escape skeeters by avoiding swamps.
Meanwhile, the Big Woods of Arkansas may be merely a fraction of what was once a 24-million-acre paradise encompassing seven states, but it's still a paradise. It still brims with too many woodpeckers to count, and owls, bears, fish, immense trees ....
Calling the Delta's Big Woods a "remnant" -- although it is one -- understates the rich, eerie and beautiful experience that is padding or paddling about in what feels like an ancient forest. It's not necessarily ancient, part of it having been logged; but everything grows so rapidly there as to seem timeless.
You could go in winter, with a kayak or canoe, when the bugs (and snakes) are fewer. And if you studied this new book by Hendrix College biology professor Matthew Moran, you would find your way back.
So this is a trail guidebook?
Biology lessons fill the first 66 pages, but the rest of the book is a trail guide with travel advice and resources.
Moran maps and describes hiking and canoe trails -- 10 in the north from Arkansas 18 near Newport to U.S. 79 near Clarendon, 15 from Clarendon south to Arkansas Post National Memorial and the Arkansas River.
For good measure, he adds a chapter on side trips, including a funny story about an attempt to float a bass boat down the Arkansas from Pendleton Dam to the Choctaw Island Wildlife Management Area. The moral of that story is don't expect steady water below a dam.
So the Big Woods is not just a swamp?
Not always, and as Moran explains, that's what has saved it from being swallowed by agriculture.
The bottomland forest dries out in the summer but it floods in rainy seasons. Those routine inundations deposit fresh tons of nutrient-rich silt and swish in fresh batches of river-dwelling fish and crustaceans. An amazing array of shrubs, trees and creatures thrive in these periodic dunkings, and need them.
Moran also explains why nonseasonal floods created by water releases at dams have damaged the forest.
How tedious are the biology chapters?
Not at all. Moran has been thrilled by encounters with wildlife in the Big Woods, and his stories are appreciative, detailed and easy to read.
The book begins by explaining in everyday words the area's changing water levels (its hydrology) and the different species they foster, plant and animal.
The many photographs and maps aren't merely pretty. One photo of the Trusten Holder Wildlife Management Area shows three people in dry woods. They're looking up a cypress to its painted high-water mark -- 20 feet -- a memorable illustration of why the area isn't a farm today.
Moran notes how the animals cope with pendulum swings from dry to wet. For example, black bears give birth in the winter, during hibernation. But the forest floods in the winter. Instead of denning in the ground, Big Woods bears hole up in tall, hollow trees.
Also, one of the 100 species of fish in the forest, the bowfin, can breathe air. (Some catfish can do that too, but not for as long. And they aren't exotic.)
No biologist would forget to mourn species that have been driven away or extirpated by human activity. His short chapter "Missing Biota" includes the once common Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon. He adds that the red wolf, elk and American bison ought to be there, but aren't.
He addresses the probable extinction of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker earlier, along with more obviously alive woodpeckers.
Will this book make me feel bad about being a human?
Nah. He'll leave you feeling like a better informed human, hopeful for the future.
ActiveStyle on 11/14/2016