A long time local:
The local I was meeting
was Frank Galloway. (I'm publishing his name with his permission.)
As I drove to his house, I started to get hints that
his family had been living in The Green Swamp area for a long,
long, time. Partly it was that the road that led past his house
had the same name as his family. Partly it was the cemetery on his extensive
property that, I noticed, was populated with many tombstones
indicating the subterrene inhabitants were also named Galloway.
(Later on, back home, I found several other "Galloway"
features marked on my North Carolina gazetteer.)
Fortunately, Frank was home and ready to show me around North
Carolina. It was really interesting chatting with Frank, because his
family had lived in that part of North Carolina since the 1750s or
so. In contrast, my family came to the USA just a few generations
ago. During my life, I've lived in Illinois, New York, Arizona, and
California. So I wonder how Frank's and my perspective about the
land are different. I think Frank probably has a very intimate sense
of place about North Carolina that I don't have about any
place.
Frank was the perfect kind of guide for this trip. He knew the area
extremely well. He was smart and
knew the natural history of plants and animals.
And he also knew the cultural history of the land. If I were alone,
I would have walked through a field and merely seen a fire-adapted
pinewoods community--Frank could point out bear scratchings,
trees that had been used for turpentine production, and areas that
were exposed to different regimes of burning.
We first went to The Green Swamp. As Frank explained, The Green Swamp
consists of a huge and essentially impassable, thorny, viny mass of
trees and shrubs known as "bay vegetation". I looked at
some of the bay vegetation--he's right--it is very dense and would
be horrible to try to penetrate. Embedded in the expanses of bay
vegetation are open pine forests, and it is in these relatively
dry, sunny areas (called "islands")
that you encounter carnivorous plants. In this photograph you can see
a nice clump of Sarracenia rubra subsp. rubra growing
on one of the islands.
