Tooling around in The Great Swamp

If you enjoy watching Nature at work, there’s really no better place in the entire state than the great swamp, a pretty vast tract of land and water tucked away in the wilds alongside Route 138 in South County. Though it’s not quite wilderness, it’s just barely big enough and pristine enough so that you stand a chance of being surprised by what’s there.

One of my favorite places is the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades National Park. When you go there (at least in December, when the dry season obliges the animals to gather wherever the water is) you’re pretty much surrounded by large creatures. You can see more than a dozen gators at once, and seven kinds of large birds, and four kinds of huge fish, etc. etc. Rhode Island’s great swamp is the closest that the Ocean State gets to that kind of abundance and spectacle.

There’s a place in our swamp where you can stand practically underneath osprey nests on top of poles over the water (once you get there you’ll see what I mean). You can actually watch these rather majestic birds conducting their business – doing their job, which is of course bad news for fish, snakes, and other creatures. When I last went there, about a month ago, we saw salamander eggs in the vernal pools, and otter scat [yes, that means droppings, but it’s a good way to learn about what kinds of animals are around.] In the summer the place just hums with life; of course that’s also the worst time for the biting insects.

Rhode Island is a pretty amazing state, with a great variety of landscapes and it makes a lot of sense to get out there. The swamp is included in Ken Weber’s excellent book Walks and Rambles in Rhode Island. If by some chance you want a guide for a nature walk, let me know.