THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410210264
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
In mid-July not too long after Nature Conservancy biologist Judy Dunscomb arrived in Virginia, she walked out on the boardwalk that crosses some North Landing River marshes off Blackwater Road.
``It's one of the most beautiful times to look at the marsh,'' Dunscomb said. ``There was a sort of hot summer haze. Everywhere there was flaming milkweed, swamp roses, marsh hibiscus. The sawgrass was blooming with plumey grass flower heads.
``It was a beautiful sea of color,'' she went on, ``so fertile and fecund.''
William Byrd II noticed the North Landing River's grand sweep of freshwater marshes in the early 1700s when he surveyed the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. He referred to the marshes as a ``green sea.''
To this day, there are still spots along the beautiful North Landing River and its creeks and marshes where you can see essentially what Byrd saw more than two centuries ago. Dunscomb knows the river well.
Deep in the wild and unspoiled woody area inland of the marsh grasses are unusual features called pocosins, a favorite of hers. A pocosin, she said, is an Indian word for swamp-on-the-hill.
Pocosins are peat bogs that have mounded up over centuries, built by falling leaves and other debris. Byrd called them ``miry pocosons'' and would have crossed some of the very same ones Dunscomb has seen as he slogged forward on his surveying mission.
``It's so inhospitable,'' Dunscomb said. ``Thick vegetation is woven together by green briars, but I have a sense of timelessness, that it's incredible ancient.''
Dunscomb, who became director of science and stewardship for the Nature Conservancy's Virginia Chapter just a year ago, is seeing the river though the eyes of a newcomer. She asks why local residents don't have the same sense of wonder about the river that she has.
``So much of it is still so wild and unspoiled, `` Dunscomb said. ``It is in remarkably good condition.''
Yet most of us take the North Landing River so for granted that we don't notice the beauty of the marsh in July or in any other season. We have little appreciation for the ``green seas'' along this jewel of a waterway that cuts through the whole of Virginia Beach.
There are some rare folks in Virginia Beach, however, who do recognize the North Landing River's unique unspoiled habitat. Among them are members of the Louis B. Fine family. Dunscomb was in Virginia Beach last weekend with other Nature Conservancy folks to lead a boat trip up the North Landing River to dedicate a natural area in memory of Fine's parents, Morris and Mamie Fine.
The area, first donated to the city of Chesapeake by the Fines, was in turn donated by Chesapeake to the Nature Conservancy. It is part of 8,000 acres of wetlands the conservancy now owns. Along with property owned by the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation, more than 10 miles of the river front is now protected.
The Morris and Mamie Fine Natural Area, highlighted by an overlook where the Pocaty River meets the North Landing, helps to protect about 50 state endangered species - many of them plants and animals in their northernmost range here in Virginia.
The North Landing River is the only area in the state where sawgrass, the dominant grass in the Florida Everglades, grows. The rare Elliot's aster and the Carolina lileaopisis, a candidate for the federal endangered species plant list, also grow in the marsh. Other treasures include the largest blue heron rookery in the state and habitat for the secretive least bittern, a little marsh bird which rarely breeds in Virginia.
The state endangered pocosins, home to briars and brambles, also are a haven for the rare spreading pogonia, a delicate pink orchid. Some of the state's last stands of Atlantic white cedar, all but logged into extinction, dominate the tree canopy in their inaccessible swampy habitat.
Once when Dunscomb was boating down a creek toward the river in this rare place, she took a wrong turn and headed up a rarely traveled gut. Six or seven great egrets were standing in the water majestically tall and still. They turned as one and looked at Dunscomb.
``I had a sense that I had intruded,'' she said, ``that I had crossed some sort of line.''
Thanks to the Fines and other generous folks, that sense of privacy the North Landing River lends to egrets and other wildlife is protected. And in turn we are given the opportunity to learn to love it.
P.S. HELP ABANDONED ANIMALS and enjoy a walk with your dog at the Virginia Beach SPCA Walk for the Animals on Oct. 30, at the Virginia Beach Campus of Tidewater Community College.
Registration begins at 11:30 a.m. and the walk starts at 1 p.m. Bring your dog, your pledges and your walking shoes. For registration forms and information, call 427-0070.
AN INTRODUCTION TO BIRD WATCHING class begins at 7 p.m. Nov. 2, at Old Dominion University. The class continues on Wednesdays through Nov. 27 and includes two weekend field trips. The fee is $55.
Call ODU's Office of Continuing Education, 683-5100, for information. MEMO: What unusual nature have you seen this week? And what do you know about
Tidewater traditions and lore? Call me on INFOLINE, 640-5555. Enter
category 2290. Or, send a computer message to my Internet address:
mbarrow(AT)infi.net.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff file photo by MORT FRYMAN
The Morris and Mamie Fine Natural Area, highlighted by an overlook
where the Pocaty River meets the North Landing, helps to protect
about 50 state endangered species of plants and animals.
by CNB