An Albemarle Experience

Borders are lines drawn on a map by people. They are political boundaries, primarily for defense and taxes. When I tell people that the North Landing River and Back Bay in southern Virginia Beach are the northernmost extent of the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary, they often reply that the Albemarle is in North Carolina. Well, it is. And it is in Virginia. Water, plants and animals don’t seem to acknowledge our borders as they move freely within the region of the Albemarle. The North Landing is especially unique. It rises from groundwater in the swamps and flows as a sluggish, blackwater coastal river south to join the Currituck Sound just over the border in North Carolina. But the water does not just flow south - it flows both ways depending on the wind. Wind tides determine whether the river is high or low.

This region - southern Virginia Beach - is located at the northern range for many southern species and the southern range for many northern species. It is also bordered by the two largest estuaries in the United States - the Chesapeake Bay and the Albemarle-Pamlico. Due to the blending of so many northern and southern species, the biodiversity in the region is exceptional. The region “supports 19 rare natural communities plus 67 plant and 22 animal species rare to Virginia.”

And it’s just so quiet. On an early, cold bluebird day in January in a shallow creek, you are in  another world. A world of dark water, marsh, and bald cypress. A secret place of wood ducks and otters where the only sounds come from the rustling of the marsh grasses in the early morning breeze. Perhaps it’s more of an experience than a place. An Albemarle Experience. 

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

A Gateway

The North Landing River is a gateway. If you are traveling north on the river through the heart of Virginia Beach, you are surrounded by wide marshland and tangled pathless swamps. Bald Cypress and Bald Eagles, residents of these wetlands for eons, watch indifferently. Passing the North Landing Bridge, you will enter the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal and reach the port city of Norfolk and the Chesapeake Bay beyond. 

Traveling south on this Virginia Scenic River, the river widens - as does the marsh - and you enter a quieter world. The North Landing merges with Currituck Sound, both part of the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System, the second largest estuary in the US. From the mouth of the North Landing you have access to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, secluded beaches, blackwater rivers, and the abundant calmness that hangs over the Albemarle region. The North Landing connects our unrestrained, delirious urban world with the tranquil Land of the Wild Goose. The North Landing River itself is an escape - a wild, undeveloped, massive system of marsh and swamp and pocosin, home to what is still wild in Virginia Beach. And home to amazing sunrises.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

West Neck Creek

Today, West Neck Creek connects the Chesapeake Bay and the Albemarle - the two largest estuaries in the United States. It was not always so, channelization made the connection. I am told that the city of Virginia Beach once promoted a Chesapeake to the Albemarle canoe race in the 80’s. The natural portion of the creek, from the Speed Fentress bridge south, is included in the North Landing River designation as a Virginia Scenic River. It is a very wild place. The creek courses through a most impenetrable landscape of wetlands, switch cane, shrubs and unforgiving mud - a haven and a corridor for wildlife. Spanish moss and enormous bald cypress trees grow along the banks. There are at least two bald eagle nests along the creek and mink, bobcats, and river otters are seen regularly and the occasional bear. Evidence of beaver activity can be found as well, a sign that they are thriving in the wetlands that surround the North Landing River and its tributaries. 

On a recent January day on West Neck, I sat watching a Great Blue Heron. She was disinterested in me, unmoved by my proximity, staring intently at the opposite bank. I followed her gaze and spotted two river otters swimming towards us, stopping regularly to eat the fish they were catching in the roots and limbs of fallen trees along the bank. At one particularly productive tangle of roots, the otters stayed. It was then that the great bird lifted and flew towards the otters and landed within feet of them. As the otters hunted for fish hiding in the tree roots, the heron picked off the smaller fish that escaped the otters. When the otters stopped to eat the fish they were catching or to rest, the heron waited patiently for them to resume hunting and deliver fish to her. The old bird is quite the opportunist.

(Can you spot the second otter?)

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Sittin’ in a Swamp

Nowadays, there are photographers most everywhere. We all have a camera in our phones available any time we deem something picture-worthy and what would probably amount to hundreds of albums of pictures in our pockets. This is a great thing, mostly. Every magnificent sunset is captured and every birthday is documented to the n’th degree. But there is something about flipping through the pages of a three ring photo album versus hunching over a phone screen and pinching in and out as we zoom. When you had to pay to see your pictures only the best ones made the album. Now, we can take as many pictures as we want to, but the delete button is not used as often as it should, including mine. 

My Nikon does not fit in my pocket, however, so I have to make a conscious decision to take it with me and devise a plan for where I am going, what time I am going and what I hope to see - hope being the driving force. Often, in the colder months, I go into a swamp.

Photographers are everywhere in today's world, but not here. I sit in solitude, a silent observer of the natural world. The swamp, a place often overlooked, reveals its profound beauty if you have a pair of chest waders and enter this darker, wetter world. Some days beavers or otters make an appearance. On other days, the wood ducks glide silently by. Other days it’s just a retreat into a different world and a respite from looking at pictures on other peoples phones.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

A Magical Place

The North Landing River is truly a magical place. The river emerges from the dark, shadowy swamps in southern Virginia Beach. The water percolates up through the thick layers of mud and peat, turning dark as coffee as it slowly trickles past giant cypress, tupelo and gum trees. The waters gather, forming creeks which eventually, slowly, join and form the North Landing. Although the main channel of the river itself is only 23 miles long from the headwaters in Gum Swamp to where the river empties into the Currituck Sound, there are over 77 river miles to explore, almost all of it isolated and unrevealed to all but duck hunters and fishermen.

The North Landing River, as part of the Pasquotank River Basin, is geographically part of the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System. 67% of the water in Virginia Beach flows to the Albemarle, the second largest estuary in the United States, not to the Chesapeake. The North Landing is the northernmost extent of the Albemarle, and when you are deep in a creek, at sunrise, watching the first light of day illuminate the marsh and filter through the cypress, it feels like the Albemarle, like magic.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Otters Under the Moss

There is a ribbon of wilderness that weaves its way through Virginia Beach - a splendid corridor of water and wetlands. The North Landing is a beautiful blackwater river that flows slowly from the heart of the city and joins the Currituck Sound just over the border with North Carolina, draining the swamps and marshes in the southern portion of the city. It is here, not so far from the beaches that draw millions of tourists, that you can escape the throngs of beachgoers. There are no souvenir stores, no strip malls, no police on every corner - there aren’t even any corners. It’s just thousands of acres of wetlands and miles of water.

 The river is home to an astonishing variety of natural communities, many of them rare, both at the state level and globally. This is the most biodiverse region in Virginia this side of the Blue Ridge mountains and there is no other river in Virginia with as many rare, threatened, and endangered plant and animal species and wetland communities. This is an environmental wonderland where eagles and osprey share the skies, dolphins feed in waist deep water, deer and bears slink through the sawgrass and - if you know where to look - river otters can be spotted under low hanging Spanish moss. 

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Morning in a Swamp

I am trying out a new idea I came up with today. A kind of video blog, in a way. I will take my writings, condense them a bit, and record myself reading the excerpt while displaying some of my pictures. We’ll see how it goes! The very first one is now available below. I may have to upload future videos to YouTube and embed them below due to space constraints on this site. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

A quiet morning in gum Swamp watching the wildlife.

Sitting in a Swamp

Sitting here in this swamp. Leaning up against a tree in my ghillie suit, I feel like I am invisible. Many warm months have passed since I last explored this tangled, mysterious world. It’s dark. Shadowy. The water is as black as the coffee in the thermos cup I clutch with both hands for warmth. It is at last getting cooler at night now that Fall has arrived. The cold chases the snakes out of this deep, wild swamp and allows me to wade and wander with less trepidation. Now I can concentrate on not falling and filling my waders instead of scanning every log and bush for the legless one, although, I must admit, I still look.

The towering cypresses and gums block out all but the most random rays of light, leaving a world of black and gray and shadows. And secrets. It is here, where the ground and the water have traded places, that the North Landing River originates. Like most blackwater rivers, her source is the groundwater that is stained by the primal mud and layers of peat of this southern swamp. The dark, tannic water percolates through the soft muck, gathers and flows between the cypress knees and swamp tupelos rising out of the lightless water, forming streams and ultimately the river. 

Silent and motionless, I watch the mink clamber about the beaver lodge. Searching. The beaver seems oblivious. Wood ducks and mergansers glide silently by. It’s morning in a swamp.Quiet. Dark.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Live Oaks & Spanish Moss

The raw, bone chilling winds that race across the lagoons and drowned river mouths of southern Virginia Beach in winter are giving way to more gentle, warmer southerly breezes. Signs of spring are beginning to surface along the creeks, hinting at the miles of vivid green grasses that will soon emerge from the soft, dark mud. Unending numbers of flowers in every color prepare to reappear as the days get longer and the migrating birds return to the feast the marshlands offer.

Shallow draft boats, shove poles and chest waders are preferred to explore this shallow, unique world of dunes, islands, sinuous creeks and marsh. In the shade of imposing live oaks draped in curtains of Spanish moss, the borderlands of Virginia and North Carolina still keep secrets and make for the perfect place to drift lazily on an early spring day.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Bird Watching

Bird watching - or birding - is the fastest growing hobby in the United States with over one third of Americans participating at some level. Here in Virginia Beach and northeastern North Carolina, birdwatchers have the opportunity to see hundreds of species of birds depending on the time of year. Birds from the arctic and the tropics pass through our area because we are situated along the Atlantic Flyway. The variety of birds to be seen is astounding. There are shorebirds on our strands and wading birds in the wetlands. Raptors soar through the air during the day as well as the night sky and our swamps and forests echo with birdsong. A most impressive sight is the island rookery in Currituck Sound where hundreds of pairs of wading birds raise their young each year.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Dolphins & Wading Birds

Along with the rookery at Monkey Island where there are hundreds of wading birds nesting, one might get lucky and run into dolphins in Currituck Sound and perhaps a wild horse or two in the marsh.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Dolphins in Currituck Sound

Spring Flowers

The first flowers to bloom on the North Landing River are the Virginia iris, beautiful - light blue and purple flowers that emerge along the water's edge. The iris is also known as the Southern Blue Flag Iris. Shortly after the iris bloom in early spring, pickerelweed begin their show of violet and blue and continue blooming all through the summer months. Unlike Virginia iris, much of the pickerelweed plant is edible, including the seeds and leaves. As the heat of summer builds, evening primrose add yellow to the palette, as do the pinks of the swamp mallow and the white flowers of arrowhead. The largest and most showy of the blossoms on the river are the rose mallows, but they will not begin to bloom until mid summer. All of the flowers of the river add vibrant color to the wetlands and stand out strikingly against the dark, tannic waters. 

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Escape

There may not be a place in Virginia Beach where you can escape into the natural world more completely than in the marshes along the North Landing River, particularly if you venture into these wetlands before the sun makes its appearance. There are no houses or roads or even cell towers to be seen. The sounds that break the stillness are part of the peace - they are of fish and frogs and owls. This is the place to take a rest from your thoughts, quiet your mind and watch the mist drift across the dark water. 

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Spanish Horses & Spanish Moss

It was a splendid late morning day in early June and we were exploring the lagoons along the border of Virginia and North Carolina. The temperature was comfortably cool, the heat and stifling humidity of summer not yet a reality. There was a fine, thin layer of clouds that diffused just enough of the sun to soften the harsh shadows. The marsh grasses bowed ever so gently with the slight breeze and it was in every way a perfect morning. 

I push poled slowly along an island in the dense marsh. The water was only a foot deep so the motor was of no use. The shallow water glowed a soft yellow from the reflection of the sand on the bottom and was strangled with grass from top to bottom. Under the surface there is as much grass unseen as there is seen above it. In summer, there is but one way to travel by boat in these shallow waters, and that is slowly. Throughout the marsh are clumps of trees - high spots in this otherwise flat landscape. Live oaks and pines draped in Spanish moss conceal the shady interior of the islands. These are wild places and wild things watch you through the moss.

I see wild horses often in these wetlands, but there was one shot I have been trying to get for some time. Poling along the island, I finally found what I had been searching for for seven years - the descendants of Spanish mustangs grazing in the marsh under the Spanish moss. 

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

An Island Rookery

It’s late February and the osprey pair has returned to their nest at my place of work. Each year they seem to return a little earlier than the last, perhaps a sign of the warming trend we are experiencing. Tundra swans and snow geese are still resting and feeding in the Back Bay and Currituck marshlands, but the great flocks will soon return north to the arctic along with other northern migratory species. As the earth continues to wobble and tilt and allow more direct sun to warm our hemisphere, the great migrations will begin. The osprey are one of the first bird species to arrive in our area from as far as South America, but they will soon be followed by legions of other birds seeking to nest and mate in the lush wetlands in southern Virginia Beach and the nearby Carolina marshes. 

There is an island rookery not far from the mouth of the North Landing River. Soon, hundreds of pairs of wading birds will build their nests among the trees and bushes of this diminutive, isolated island. Far from predators and near to wetlands teeming with fish, the island is a haven for these long-legged birds and their chicks. Due to the small size of the island and the number of wading birds, it is common to take pictures of several species at once, and because of its isolation, human visitors are infrequent. It is quite an experience to float along on a gentle summer day with a gentle breeze and a hint of salt in the air as over a thousand wading birds prepare and care for their young.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Wild Horses in the Marsh

There are wild horses in the marsh. For centuries, they have inhabited the maritime forests and marsh islands along the border of Virginia and North Carolina. 

Encountering the horses among the islands is never assured. There are miles and miles of creeks that wind and cut through the marshlands, but most are too shallow or choked with submerged, prop-fouling grasses for a V hulled boat, but I tend to push the limits. In the end, I always have my shove pole and waders. The horses seem to prefer to graze along the edges of the islands, moving slowly with a marsh mentality, testing each step on the spongy islands. Sometimes, I hear them before I see them, their bodies hidden in the grasses and shrubs. And if I am lucky, they swim the channels between the islands.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

“All the sweetest winds..”

There are many songs that celebrate the South. “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Seven Bridges Road”, and “Carolina in My Mind” present themselves almost universally.  These first two sentences are bound to get many people tapping away on their keyboards, but a list of songs is not the point here. Southerners love the South. We identify with it. It’s a way of life. I’m not sure that northerners or northeasterners ‘feel’ northern or northeastern. Some may identify with a city, like New York, for example, or a state, but Southerners ‘feel’ Southern. Of course, it’s changing, in some places - mostly the big cities. I guess the draw of sweet tea, big front porches, old hunting dogs and no snow is too strong to resist. 

The south has its own feeling, doesn’t it? “All the sweetest winds, they blow across the south.” And it’s true. Verifiable. I verify it each time I take my boat out and drift among the marsh islands along the border of Virginia and North Carolina. I creep carelessly along, the boat barely moving through the black water as the marsh grasses bend gently and the moss sways in the oaks. The past whispers through the tall reeds and the wildflowers are made more brilliant against the dark, tannin stained water. The air is thick with the earthy smell of the marsh and just a hint of salt. Somehow, the only way to be is barefoot. This is my South, without a care and away from the hellfire of the modern material world.

“Softly in the distance, nothin' stirs about,” and “there is moonlight and moss in the trees.”

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Dwarves and Horses

Here in southern Virginia Beach and northeastern North Carolina, many species of plants and animals reach their northern limit. One of them is a small palm tree - the Sabal minor - also called the dwarf or swamp palmetto. There are other names, Carolina palmetto and swamp cabbage come to mind. The dwarf palmetto prefers wet soil and tolerates moderate levels of salt, both of which are the exact conditions that are found in the border region of Virginia Beach and Currituck. 

The dwarf palmetto can be found hugging the coast from Florida to North Carolina. According to Google, the northernmost known location of this plant is Monkey Island in Currituck Sound. Well, Google did not ask me or any of the locals in the area. The two palms in this image are several miles north of Monkey Island on a marsh island just south of the Virginia border. I have it in my mind that I have seen at least one in Back Bay, but I can’t remember on which island I saw it. I suppose I will have to make another trip soon. 

Oh, and there are wild horses among the palmettos.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

Pungo Ferry

Ferry on the North Landing River

A ferry. At Pungo Ferry. Well, this is Pungo and that is a ferry, but it’s not the Pungo Ferry ferry. Today, there is no ferry that carries passengers across the North Landing River from Pungo to Blackwater and back. The Pungo Ferry Bridge has replaced the ferry, but kept the name. How often do you see the words ferry and bridge in the same name? 

The high rise bridge that spans the river today was completed in 1991 and replaced the old steel turnstile bridge that used to connect the two banks of the river starting in 1928. Prior to that, a ferry shuttled people, vehicles and horses across the river. Throughout history there have been two other wooden drawbridges at Pungo Ferry - one was destroyed by a barge and the other vanished into history. 

The North Landing River is part of the Intracoastal Waterway and the ferry was traveling north.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.

A Place Easier to Feel..

The marshlands on the North Landing River, Back Bay and Currituck Sound are enchanting - “a place easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain.” I escape to this world of watery grasslands and slip away amongst the tall, brilliant green grasses as they rustle sweetly and sway gently in the summer breeze. The marsh grasses border every lagoon, creek and channel that snake their way through the marsh in every direction. On the islands, majestic live oaks stand as they always have, Spanish moss clinging to the massive limbs, concealing the cool, sandy interior. These wetlands are a care-killing kind of scenery - a place of great silences and juniper water. Sometimes, you may feel the eyes of the ancients peering through the reeds, or perhaps it’s just the wild horses feeding in the marsh.

Schedule your ecotour to explore this environmental wonderland.