The Land of the Quaking Earth

The Land of the Quaking Earth

The Dismal swamps stretch from the tidewaters of Virginia down through eastern North Carolina and on into South Carolina. Four hundred years of dredging canals and damming rivers have made it a shadow of its former glory. There are still areas that are very close to what it once was, but the hand of man has touched nearly all. Endless miles of huge trees have been hacked and hauled from the swamps. In their place are millions of pine pulp wood trees to make newspapers and cardboard boxes. I admit that my kin helped do that cutting. Where the lumber train used to run to haul out the huge logs is now a dirt road and is called "Gurkin's Switch". That's my name also - Bob Gurkin. Carrier pigeons have been commercially hunted to extinction. Deer were slaughtered to the point that they had to be imported from other states to help start the herds here again. The red wolf was hunted to extinction. There are exactly 6 red wolves in the state at this time. A man who said he thought the wolf ‘might harm one of his children’ killed the 7th. Here we call a panther a 'painter'. One person claimed to have seen a painter 4 or 5 years ago, but everyone thinks he was either drunk or lying. I don't think any of those are left.

There are a very few Cherokee left in the east and a some of the Lumbee Indians are around. My great, great grandma was a Lumbee. Her name was Hattie Mae. I can still remember some of her kin coming up to the back door of our cabin, begging for some food. The members of the Lumbee Indians claim that the people who made up the "Lost Colony" of North Carolina came to live with them, and quite a few surnames from the "Lost Colony" are used by the Lumbees. My great, great grandma's last name was Waters and that was one of those names. The Indians here call this land "The Quaking Earth", and it's easy to see why. There are areas in the swamps where you can stomp on the ground and for yards around the earth will shake and quiver like a bowl of Jell-O. There are floating islands also. A tree or bush will fall into the water and start picking up debris. Soon grass and reeds will start growing from it and it will become a small floating island. Some of the islands may get up to a half-acre in size. If you jump on an island, it will rock and move like a boat. You better not walk across it though. If you fall through, you may not come back up. The water is a dark, dark brown. You can hold up a glass of it and not be able to see the other side of the glass. Water moccasins and cottonmouths make it home and yes they can bite under water. Just watch one of them coming up with a fish in its mouth sometime if you doubt that. The largest alligator I personally have seen was about 14 feet long, but I have seen a bunch of smaller ones. I have seen gators cut open and the derndest things would be in their stomachs. Turtles, bricks, shotgun shells. I haven't a clue as to why they eat that stuff. I guess I better quit right here. I could write about my beloved Dismals forever.