Rediscovering America_ Exploring the Small Towns of Virginia & Maryland - Bill Burnham [140]
There was a small pocket of tamaracks between the hills behind my grandfather’s house. We kids found it a great hideout from the summer heat (and summer chores). Once we found the skeleton of a cow, partially hidden by the needles (the land had once been a dairy farm). We took the skull home, much to our mother’s chagrin, and the find forever marked the tamarack forest as a mystical place. Grandpa loved the tamaracks as much as we did, for he named the dirt road leading to his new house Tamarack Hill.
My maternal grandfather was equally fond of this tree. A school principal, he tried his hand at writing nature and adventure articles. His article entitled The Beauty of Tamaracks, published posthumously in The Conservationist (Vol. 40, No. 3, November-December 1985), explained how the trees are typical of northern bogs and swamplands, having followed close behind the retreating glaciers, taking up residence in “moss-fringed kettles and tarns left by the ice.... But it is the beauty of the tamaracks, their ethereal grace and delicacy that fills me with delight. Twice my spirits have been lifted by the radiance of their golden glory, unexpectedly and by pure chance.”
Of those two “incidents,” one was on a Maine tidal river, the other 1,000 miles north on a Canadian river tundra. So imagine my surprise at seeing a stand of this northern tree here – south of the Mason-Dixon line!
The reason this pocket of northern boreal forest exists dates to the last Ice Age. Although the glacial ice sheet did not reach this far south, it did push a cool climate and permanently wet conditions into the region. The glacier retreated north, but in a few high mountain valleys, frost pockets were trapped. The Cranesville Swamp area, along with a handful of areas in West Virginia, are relict colonies of a northern forest bog that remains 10,000 years after the last Ice Age.
Several well-marked trails traverse the small preserve and pass through distinctly different plant communities – from dry heath to conifer forest to wetland, where a boardwalk crosses the peat bog’s carnivorous plants and Sphagnum moss.
Living and traveling in the mid-Atlantic, we certainly don’t get to see tamaracks very often. It’s good to know there are a few nearby.
Information
Cranesville Swamp Nature Preserve is located off Lake Ford Road near Cranesville, West Virginia. There are no facilities, just a board showing a map of the trails. It’s not easy to find, so best get the brochure with directions and trail map ahead of time, available from the Garrett County Chamber of Commerce. (tel. 301-387-4386, www.garrettchamber.com)
Southern Maryland
Sand cliffs and harbors are the dominant features of communities on the Chesapeake Bay side of this peninsula, while Potomac River wildlife refuges line the west side, where bald eagles nest, just a short drive from the nation’s capital. In between are small towns set amid acres and acres of golden soybean and corn.
Getting Here
Route 301 is the north-south vehicle for getting through southern Maryland.
Southern Maryland is served by Baltimore/Washington International Airport/BWIA (tel. 410-859-7111, www.bwiairport.com).
Regional Information
A State Welcome Center is located on US 301 at Newburg, near the Virginia border.
Chesapeake Beach & North Beach
The farms of Maryland are growing houses – McMansions some call them – huge new homes on small lots, laid out on grids. They sprout throughout northern Virginia and into central Maryland. Down on the peninsula of southern Maryland, the pace of suburban sprawl slows a little, but there’s no doubt that it’s coming. On the approach to Chesapeake Beach, tobacco fields are being turned into housing developments, commercial fishing centers into sport fishing getaways.
Around Town
As if anticipating the oncoming tide of homes and people,