Walking the raised dike between managed impoundments — how the refuge works the water to set the table for the birds.
Now you're out in the open on the heart of the walk — a raised ribbon of shell with water on both sides, running arrow-straight through the marsh. What you're crossing is a system: on either hand lie the impoundments, those managed ponds, and the refuge works them like a slow tide it can control. By raising a gate here or lowering one there, the managers can flood a basin or draw it down to bare the mud at just the right moment — putting the buffet out for the birds on a schedule the ocean never kept. It's gardening, really, on a scale of hundreds of acres, and the crop is wings.
Look to the mangroves along the bank and you may spot fat, spiky clumps wedged in the branches — wild-pine bromeliads, cousins of the pineapple, riding the trees without harming them and catching their water from the air. You're about halfway to the end now. Keep drinking your water, keep that eye on the warm path for a sunning snake, and look ahead — the dike is about to open onto the biggest water of the whole walk.
Photo: NPS staff · Public domain
