Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
we're about seven miles
north of Belzoni Mississippi You simply take Highway 7 north out of Belzoni
and go for about seven miles to and watch for signs to
Sky Lake Wildlife management area
we're gotta see some the largest
and oldest bald cypress trees in the world
all right here we are at the Sky Lake wildlife management area in
just north of Belzoni Mississippi where some of the
biggest bald cypresses in the world stands
these are some of the oldest trees in the world and some of the biggest
so they made this wild life
refuge so that all of these trees would be protected
some come on we've got a long walk so come on let's go see some of the biggest and
oldest trees in the world oh yeah
bring your saw.
now if you come to this wildlife management to Sky Lake
ah don't expect a big crowd because
when we got there we didn't see a soul
all the time that we were there and don't bring any money cause it's all free
I really think that this is
one of the most beautiful places that i've ever seen
that tree right there in front of you is several
hundred-years-old
now the Bald Cypress not only grows in swamps
but requires a lot of water it will actually grow in different soils.
It'll grow on dry land but it don't grow as big
because in the swamps it don't have as much competition
and with the Spanish moss hanging from the trees
it's actually hard to find a prettier place
and although this is swamp
I wasn't bothered by mosquitoes for some reason
we're looking
at now some small cypress trees
in a few hundred years they will probably be grown
or look more like this one here
now there is everything in the world in this swamp including alligators
this tree here is several hundred years old
and they were really prized for their
for the lumber because the lumber hardly even rotted
as a matter of fact this walk way cost over half a million dollars to build
if I would have known
that this walk way goes a half a mile into the swamp
I'd have worn some different kind of shoes
you can look through the trees and still see the walk way going
now here is something unusual to see
this is one stump, the only stump I saw
that's actually been sawed off. If you take a look at some of the logs here
that was cut they are almost as tall as these men were.
and the only way they could saw these trees
was a long time ago was to take 12 foot
crosscut saws with a man on each end
and they were actually standing in wooden boats to saw the logs down
this is what they call a steam donkie
and that's so oncet hey got the logs on
dry ground this is what they moved them around with
we're fortunate that the cypress here in this swamp were saved and spared
least all except for that one there. I just don't understand how they got them out of the
swamp
ok here we go we're still walking
this tree right here what they do is they grow straight and tall
for the first few hundred years then they start spreading out at the bottom and
when they are dying out they actually
die from the inside out
before they die they will all be hollow
that tree could easily be six to seven hundred years old that we just looked at
here is something else interesting about the cypress. The cypress acts like a water pump
it actually if you take a cypress tree that's eleven inches in diameter
it actually drinks around 26 gallons
of water a day Now if an 11 inch cypress
will drank 26 gallons of water a day
just how much do you think this giant here would drank
and also a tree like this can be sawed up
and made into five or six houses
and here we are we finally reach the end of our little journey
this tree right here you're looking at
is the oldest one in the swamp the one we come to look at
although the top is out of it
it still stands 70 feet tall
this tree is estimated because they come and they took
sample cores out of it to determine the ages
of these trees.This tree is estimated to be
a little over a thousand years old. Now you wonder why those people are out there
standing in a swamp
well they're not
a few years back this
area had the the longest drought
that they had ever had in 50 years and the swamp sorta dried up so they
could actually come out here and
they took advantage the the dry weather
in order to build this walk way
around the base of this tree
the circumference is around 40 something feet
now keep in mind this water is anywhere from
3 to 5 feet deep
see all these trees when they die
they become hollow but it still takes several hundred years
for them to die
the Indians love to build their canoes out of these cypress trees because
it take about a 24inch diamiter cypress
and hew their canoes out of them
because they hardly ever rot
and sometimes we are still
those canoes
we actually heard a alligator jumping
and flashing it around in the water while we were there
you can look back through
all the trees and see sorta how long this walk way is
now they built this little area here with
benches so you can sit down and rest
because you will probably need to by the time you get here
I tried to look through the trees to see just how far the swamp went
but I wasn't able to see out of it
they say there's over seven hundred and seventy something acres of swamp here
The one who really pushed this project
was at the time the first Lady of Mississippi
and that was Marsha Marsha Marsha
Barbour
Haley Barbour's wife
I'm still suprised about the mosquitoes. They didn't bother us at all
I can't promise that all the time
but I didn't have any problems with them
this is absolutely a beautiful place and the
they built a walk way
you can see how long that walk way is
it just keeps on going
so don't if you're not able to walk
get a wheelchair and let somebody push you
but I'm telling you you won't see any more beautiful spot on earth probably
if you like swamps this is a it