Hugh Branyon's Seven Worlds

That trail system that spins out from the Nature Center — the Backcountry Trail — is one of the finest things about this park, and it carries a good man's name, so let me tell you about both.

First the trail. More than twenty-eight miles of it, paved paths and gravel and long boardwalks, looping all through the wild interior of this park. And the marvel of it is how much world it packs into so little ground. Walk it, or better yet ride a bike along it, and you pass through seven distinct natural communities, one right after another — the coastal dunes with their sea oats; the maritime forest of wind-bent live oaks; open freshwater marsh loud with frogs; the dark still water of a cypress swamp; pine flatwoods; and more, each with its own plants and birds and creatures. You can go from windswept beach dune to shadowy swamp in the space of a morning's easy walk. There are national parks a hundred times the size that don't give you that kind of variety.

Now the name. Hugh Branyon. He was the superintendent of this park for the better part of a lifetime — a man who gave something like forty-seven years to Alabama's state parks, most of them right here, watching over this coast through storms and seasons and changes, until he finally retired. When they built this trail, they named it for him, and it's a fitting monument: not a statue, not a plaque, but twenty-eight miles of living, breathing park, threading together seven worlds, open free to anybody with two feet or two wheels and a morning to spend. That's a good way to be remembered.