Blue Goose ~ Day 260

February 11, 2015 ~ Greenville, MS to Stuttgart, AR

I spent a delightful morning driving The Great River Road north from Greenville with a two-hour detour east a few miles to Dahomey NWR where I drove back into the woods for three miles, stopping intermittently to see what birds were about. Dahomey was first leased and then purchased from The Nature Conservancy. After the capricious flooding of the Mississippi was controlled by the construction of levees along the river, wetland habitat suffered. Dahomey is addressing that...water, water, water....again. The woods were half swampy. All was quiet on this sunny morning....peaceful and sort of perfect for an hour of down time. I feel blessed to have inherited the gene that recognizes nature's soothing power. Cardinals flit wherever I stop, along with an assortment of titmice, woodpeckers, kinglets and sparrows, and an occasional thrasher or warbler. Crows, hawks and vulture cruise overhead. I love how some birds rustle in the dry leaves and how sometimes that is the only sound.

It was a lovely morning with little traffic and only a few small towns. The river levee was usually in sight on my left, and I drove up on it at one point, hoping to see the Mississippi, but I only saw bottomlands with a messy mix of trees, tangled brush and dried mud. I read Rising Tide (not The Rising Tide) years ago but need to re-read it. The land is all planted in cotton, and gigantic farm machines were discing and plowing and doing whatever it is they do to prepare for planting.

On the levee near Alligator, MS

On the map, the Mississippi is tortuous, meandering in S- and C-shapes with numerous oxbows left behind after high water periods, looking like the stranded pieces of river that they are. What is comical though is that the Louisiana - Mississippi boundary (which hereabouts is/was the middle of the Mississippi River channel) doesn't change when the river does. Now pieces of each state project like polyps into their neighbor's state since the main channel used to run that way. Google the town of Alligator, MS to see what I mean. Or follow the river north from Greenville for awhile on your phone map app.

There were many long abandoned small and narrow houses, some nearly covered by vegetation. The Great River Road goes through 10 states and takes four days of driving (36 hours if one drives without stopping).

I crossed over into Arkansas at Helena and stopped at the beautiful Arkansas Welcome Center which had at least a thousand handouts and a staff who were determined to provide travelers with customized trip information, whether they wanted it or not. It is always interesting to meet a person who is inquisitively challenged. They ask questions but do not follow up on answers unless it suits their agenda, which in this case was finding information they thought I would need to continue through Arkansas. I did appreciate the map. When they asked in which town I intended to spend the night, I didn't offer that I was sleeping in my van as that wasn't an option they would have appreciated....bless their hearts...

Moving west from the River, I came to White River NWR which also has been renamed recently to the Dale Bumpers White River NWR. Dale was a Democratic governor of Arkansas and a US Senator for 24 years.

WWW.FWS.GOV

As a U.S. Senator from 1975 to 1999, Mr. Bumpers...facilitated an innovative land exchange to swap Idaho timberland for bottomland forests and wetlands in Arkansas, adding 41,000 acres to the White River and Cache River National Wildlife Refuges. As Governor, he helped stop the channelization of 232 miles of the Cache River and its tributary, Bayou DeView.  

Mr. Bumpers and his wife Betty have been married for 65 years. Together they championed childhood immunization on a national scale. 

He is deserving of honor but I like the usually elegant and simple refuge names without a person attached. Except maybe for the Rachel Carson or Charles Russell NWRs. Isn't Brigantine NWR more descriptive than Edwin B. Forsythe NWR?

The White River refuge is approximately 60 miles long along the floodplain of the White river, and varies in width from one to ten miles. So it's huge and 95% forested bottomlands. I walked the Upland Nature Trail near the VC and part of the Bottomland Trail which goes down to the river. And that's about all except for checking out the VC where an impressive exhibit dominates the main room...a cypress tree in the swamp with all the expected fauna, including a nesting Black Bear and her two tiny cubs.

There are numerous dirt and gravel roads, primitive camping sites, boat launches, and hiking trails up and down the river. It must be an amazing place during spring migration. Many of these southern refuges feature the exquisite Prothonotory Warbler in their brochures, or the equally stunning Painted Bunting. So, White River is a large important refuge, nearly contiguous with Cache River NWR just to the north. Where they meet was the area of the 2004 sighting (or not) of an Ivory-billed Woodpecker that caused the hearts and minds of ornithologists and common citizens all over the world to lighten. Subsequent skepticism prevailed however since no one produced a definitive unchallenged photograph of an IBWO. But this would certainly be the type of remote and wild habitat they could support them.

I pulled up behind a green farm machine which filled both lanes. And then, totally unexpectedly, I came to a field with 10,000 "light geese." I easily saw White and Blue Snow Geese, but there were probably Ross's and Greater White-fronted in the mix.

A few of the 10,000 geese near Suttgart, AR

They were mostly on the ground with hundreds still flying in. The sun was setting, coloring the sky with today's unique palette. That every sunset is different is ensured by the variables of light and clouds and dust and wind and moisture.

In Stuttgart, where I stayed in a motel, I went to La Petite Cajun Bistro (should be Le Petit Cajun Bistro) because the motel had their menu on the desk. The venue was like a church basement or school cafeteria with one large room and tables and chairs with no pretensions other than utilitarian. The owner was the most unprepossessing restaurant owner I could have imagined, especially for this place with better than average food. He had jeans, a bill cap, a T-shirt with some cartoon character on the back. He looked exactly like someone who might work in a small town hardware store. He said his ex-wife came from South Haven. There were high-end foodie magazines on the small bar in the corner, like FSR (Full Service Restaurant). The menu had local "bayou" and seafood specialities, including alligator. I ordered Crawfish Etoufee, sautéed green beans, cole slaw and coconut cream pie. The pie was the best I've ever tasted. The crawfish had a spicy but subtle Cajun seasoning with generous pieces of meat.

With that said, I think I got food poisoning as I woke up with stomach cramps which persisted for the next 36 hours. They weren't debilitating but definitely unpleasant.