We have gone from the mangroves of Florida back into the marshes of Georgia and South Carolina.

The mangroves are beautiful. They are all you see for long stretches along the waterway. The Seminole Indians called Red Mangroves "walking trees", because with their high arching roots they seem to spread over tidal flats as if they were walking. Mangroves actually create land. Their elevated stilt-like roots catch and hold silt, slowly building higher ground. They create one of the most productive ecosystems in the world, dropping 7,000 pounds of leaves, twigs, branches and flowers into each acre of wetland. When a mangrove leaf first drops, it is about 3% protein. Give it another month, after being colonized by bacteria, fungi, and algae, and it contains 20% protein. This then becomes food for crabs and small fish, which are in turn eaten by larger fish and crabs, turtles, snakes, wading birds, osprey and eagles.

Once into GA we are surrounded by marshland. It is of incomparable natural beauty, but we sure want to get by it! The marshes are made up of cordgrasses--Oyster Cordgrass, Saltmeadow Cordgrass...there are so many different varieties of these grasses, all of which are salt-tolerant. Cordgrass is the "the circle of life" real deal. It holds the mud against erosion, keeps the water clean, and provides shelter to everything from mussels to Great Egrets. Cordgrass is the basis of the entire food chain. When the cordgrass dies in the late fall, the "leftovers" feed fish and crabs, who in turn provide food for birds and small mammals. Deer and wild horses feed on the cordgrass like hay. So while these many miles of marsh are monotonous, the cruising guide says to think of it not as a swamp but rather as a vast wheat field for animals.

GA's coastal marshes were once home to hundreds of wild horses, called marsh tackies because they roamed and grazed the acres of salt marsh. The tackies were small working horses, let loose on the marshes in the winter to feed, then rounded up in the spring and fall for tilling.

Descendants of these marsh tackies still roam the Cumberland Islands, now mixed with a trainload of wild mustangs relocated from Arizona in the 1920's. We spotted a few passing the western shore of Little Cumberland Island.

See correspsonding album with pix.