216
As we venture down river, inching our way toward the Atlantic, we see river
otters, an enormous pileated woodpecker searching patiently for carpenter ants in
the rotted out holes, mid-canopy, of a Hickory glen, Mississippi Kites, a Red fox
and Eastern Fox Squirrels, the odd wild turkey, and raccoons. Georgia, and the
Oconee River specifically, presents to the adverting heart a lovely and bewildering
biological labyrinth.
8
A beautifully planted garden millions of years ago, whose
geology and human history have much altered its contours, and pruned it in ways
both rude and reckless. Nonetheless, a garden remains.
It is, of course, the one American state named after a King, George II, when it
was founded—the last of 13 colonies—by James Oglethorpe in 1733. A confusion
of ecotones, overlapping systems, biotic revelations, as in the case of Broxton
Rocks, near Douglas, 90 minutes south of where we presently sojourn. At Broxton
one chances upon a remarkable microbiome of cascades plunging off mini-cliffs
teeming with ground orchids, and a miasma of wiregrass and Japanese climbing
ferns, the now rare longleaf pines beyond.
9
Broxton and the Oconee are but two
moments in tens of millions of years’ worth of bioreverie amid Georgia’s myriad
physiographic minutiae—highlands, lookout plateaus, peneplains, the Piedmont
and Coastal plains, sounds, tidal creeks, salt marshes, 15 barrier islands
10
—from the
Blue Ridge and 11 peaks over 4000 feet, to the so-called Austroriparian (humidconiferous) Biotic Provinces.
11
The State, ripe with contradictions, is a repository of
every paleological and illogical biological assertion one cares to posit. It might as
well be the entire world (Fig. 23.2).
We have seen plentiful bones from extinct species that meandered throughout
these near tropical groves and marshlands, like the giant Bison latifrons, the largest
bovid ever documented, horns from tip to tip exceeding 200 centimeters, over four
times that of a modern bison.
12
Latifrons vanished during the Last Glacial Maximum
of the Pleistocene in Georgia, approximately 20,000 years ago. But for well over
200,000 years this 2700-pound herbivore enjoyed the thickets of fog and over 3600
plant species to sample, a monarch in its domain, co-habiting its luscious swamps
with short-faced and cave bears, ground sloths and saber-toothed cats. Macrofossils
of the Columbian mammoth and Giant Land Tortoise have also been unearthed in
8 See “The Flora of the Oconee National Wildlife Refuge,” Georgia Botanical Society, compiled by
Marie B. Mellinger, © 1997, John Pickering, https://www.discoverlife.org/nh/cl/ONF/plants.html,
Accessed April 20, 2019.
9 https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/broxton-rocks/,
Accessed April 19, 2019.
10 See “Island Habitats,” https://ugami.uga.edu/sapelo-island/island-habitats/, Accessed April 20,
2019.
11 See “Physiographic & Biogeographic Regions Of Georgia,” by Robert A. Norris, in Georgia
Birds, by Thomas D. Burleigh, with Reproductions of Original Paintings by George Miksch
Sutton, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1958 pp. 25–76.
12 See “Bison lattifrons” in “Prehistoric Fauna” site by Roman Uchytel, https://prehistoric-fauna.
com/Bison-latifrons, Accessed April 20, 2019.
23 A River Somewhere in Georgia
As we venture down river, inching our way toward the Atlantic, we see river
otters, an enormous pileated woodpecker searching patiently for carpenter ants in
the rotted out holes, mid-canopy, of a Hickory glen, Mississippi Kites, a Red fox
and Eastern Fox Squirrels, the odd wild turkey, and raccoons. Georgia, and the
Oconee River specifically, presents to the adverting heart a lovely and bewildering
biological labyrinth.
8
A beautifully planted garden millions of years ago, whose
geology and human history have much altered its contours, and pruned it in ways
both rude and reckless. Nonetheless, a garden remains.
It is, of course, the one American state named after a King, George II, when it
was founded—the last of 13 colonies—by James Oglethorpe in 1733. A confusion
of ecotones, overlapping systems, biotic revelations, as in the case of Broxton
Rocks, near Douglas, 90 minutes south of where we presently sojourn. At Broxton
one chances upon a remarkable microbiome of cascades plunging off mini-cliffs
teeming with ground orchids, and a miasma of wiregrass and Japanese climbing
ferns, the now rare longleaf pines beyond.
9
Broxton and the Oconee are but two
moments in tens of millions of years’ worth of bioreverie amid Georgia’s myriad
physiographic minutiae—highlands, lookout plateaus, peneplains, the Piedmont
and Coastal plains, sounds, tidal creeks, salt marshes, 15 barrier islands
10
—from the
Blue Ridge and 11 peaks over 4000 feet, to the so-called Austroriparian (humidconiferous) Biotic Provinces.
11
The State, ripe with contradictions, is a repository of
every paleological and illogical biological assertion one cares to posit. It might as
well be the entire world (Fig. 23.2).
We have seen plentiful bones from extinct species that meandered throughout
these near tropical groves and marshlands, like the giant Bison latifrons, the largest
bovid ever documented, horns from tip to tip exceeding 200 centimeters, over four
times that of a modern bison.
12
Latifrons vanished during the Last Glacial Maximum
of the Pleistocene in Georgia, approximately 20,000 years ago. But for well over
200,000 years this 2700-pound herbivore enjoyed the thickets of fog and over 3600
plant species to sample, a monarch in its domain, co-habiting its luscious swamps
with short-faced and cave bears, ground sloths and saber-toothed cats. Macrofossils
of the Columbian mammoth and Giant Land Tortoise have also been unearthed in
8 See “The Flora of the Oconee National Wildlife Refuge,” Georgia Botanical Society, compiled by
Marie B. Mellinger, © 1997, John Pickering, https://www.discoverlife.org/nh/cl/ONF/plants.html,
Accessed April 20, 2019.
9 https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/broxton-rocks/,
Accessed April 19, 2019.
10 See “Island Habitats,” https://ugami.uga.edu/sapelo-island/island-habitats/, Accessed April 20,
2019.
11 See “Physiographic & Biogeographic Regions Of Georgia,” by Robert A. Norris, in Georgia
Birds, by Thomas D. Burleigh, with Reproductions of Original Paintings by George Miksch
Sutton, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1958 pp. 25–76.
12 See “Bison lattifrons” in “Prehistoric Fauna” site by Roman Uchytel, https://prehistoric-fauna.
com/Bison-latifrons, Accessed April 20, 2019.
23 A River Somewhere in Georgia