The Great Dismal: A Carolinian's Swamp Memoir

by Bland Simpson

Overview

Just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina-Virginia line, lies the Great Dismal Swamp, one of America's most mysterious wilderness areas. The swamp has long drawn adventurers, runaways, and romantics, and while many have tried to conquer it, none has succeeded. In this engaging memoir, Bland Simpson, who grew up near the swamp in North Carolina, blends personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to create an intriguing portrait of the Great Dismal Swamp and its people. For this edition, he has added an epilogue discussing developments in the region since 1990.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807867068
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/09/2000
Series:	Chapel Hill Books
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Bland Simpson, who teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is author of Into the Sound Country (with photography by Ann Cary Simpson) and The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey. A member of the Red Clay Ramblers, an internationally acclaimed string band, he has collaborated on such musicals as Kudzu, King Mackerel & The Blues Are Running, Diamond Studs, and Fool Moon.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Simpson has given us a jewel of natural and human history."—New Yorker



An engaging portrait."—Publishers Weekly



Indians, lumbermen, hermits, fugitive slaves, swamp rats, canal builders, and bird watchers have all enjoyed the slightly sinister beauty of the Great Dismal. Mr. Simpson's book, part history and part travelogue, entices the reader to join them."—Atlantic Monthly



Nature-writing at its best, classic in its fervor, sincere in its integrity, transfixing in its gem-like language. Simpson reveals to us by the sheer power of his prose the importance of preserving places like the Swamp, and of the joy of visiting them."—Christian Science Monitor



In this quietly eloquent book, Bland Simpson takes the reader on a journey through a remarkable place, and the stories he brings back are well worth the trip."—North Carolina Historical Review



A fascinating book. . . . It will be welcomed by the serious naturalist and by the armchair traveler."—The State



No pleasure quite matches that of reading prose that feels as natural as breathing. . . . [Simpson] takes us for walks in a rich and strange landscape, meanwhile sliding in all sorts of human and natural history."—Newsday



A splendid account, meticulously researched. . . . Bland Simpson has worked some magic here. In fact, I'm heading straight for the Swamp."—William W. Warner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay

Editorial Reviews

Northernmost of the southern swamps, the Great Dismal sits astride the Virgnia-North Carolina border and is perhaps the most mysterious wilderness area in the U.S. It has a colorful history: George Washington invested in a rice farm there; it was a refuge for runaway slaves, home to moonshiners and lumbermen and a rewarding spot for hunters and trappers. Because of a high tannic acid content, the swamp's water has remarkable keeping qualities; the Navy used the water to supply the fleet in the 19th century. Simpson ( Heart of the Country ) grew up in the area; here he reminisces about childhood visits to the swamp, talks to oldtimers and describes recent developments. The Great Dismal Swamp Canal, connecting Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound, is the oldest extant manmade waterway in America. The swamp's natural history, encompassing black bear, bobcat, a bird paradise, rare ferns and wildflowers, is also examined in this engaging portrait. Illustrations. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Simpson mixes history with personal visits and interviews to show the uses, changes, and effects of the swamp, ``the oldest continuously used man-made waterway'' in the United States, from the 18th century to now. Washington, Jefferson, Civil War armies, timbermen, runaway slaves, farmers, sportspeople--all have had designs on the Great Dismal Swamp on the Virginia/North Carolina border at one time or another. Its industries of shingle cutting, cypress lumbering, hunting, and trapping had nearly ended by 1973, when the area became a national wildlife refuge. Although near major populations, the swamp, Simpson notes, has been an endlessly fascinating subject of literature, music, and legend. Of regional interest especially, for public and academic collections.-- Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Library Journal

YA --For all those readers who mourn the lack of a grandpa or old auntie who'll invite them to sit a spell and listen to tales of bygone days, Simpson offers memoirs of the Great Dismal. In an informed conversational tone, he weaves the physical and social history of both the swamp and those whose lives intertwined with it. He begins with his own boyhood recollections: ``I had no notion that anything had ever been different than it was now or ever would be.'' He moves swiftly back 10,000 years to hypothesize about the first man or woman ``to disappear . . . into the Great Dismal Swamp,'' and then on to the role the swamp played in the lives of such famous men as William Drummond, William Byrd II, and George Washington. Interviews with old-timers such as lifelong swamper Reggie Gregory are intermingled with tales of the lumbermen, escaped slaves, and the flora and fauna. A limited but steady young adult audience will enjoy spending a few hours in the Great Dismal. --Barbara Hawkins, Lake Bradock Secondary, Fairfax County, VA

School Library Journal

The Great Dismal Swamp lies just below the Tidewater area of Virginia, straddling the North Carolina-Virginia line. Simpson (writing, U. of North Carolina) mixes personal experience, travel narrative, oral history, and natural history to portray the Swamp and its people. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Beautiful writing by someone who knew this famously forbidding tangle of canals and legends from childhood."—Annie Proulx



Simpson has written a most interesting personal memoir of his romance with the swamp. It is rich with the place's history and with stories of people who have lived in or near the swamp."—Robert Pittman, St. Petersburg Times

From the Publisher