The Ghost River: A Paddler's Delight
by Keith Kirkland

As the manager of Outdoors Inc. in Midtown for more than a decade, and an avid canoer for twenty, I love to surprise the many folks who ask: "Where's a beautiful canoeing stream that's not far away?" Most are surprised when I tell them: "The Wolf River below LaGrange, Tennessee." The word, however, is finally getting out.

After more than twenty years of seeking out and paddling beautiful rivers, this section is one of my all-time favorites. The river feels so wild and exotic you'll think you are on a tributary of the Amazon. Instead, you're only 40 minutes from Germantown.

The Ghost River section of the Wolf is one of the most beautiful, varied and challenging wetland canoe trails in the country. Paddling the Ghost River section surprises paddlers (and biologists) with five distinctly different wetland communities within a relatively short river section. As a canoeist, you can enjoy watching for the flora's transitions as you venture deeper into the Wolf and its rising water table.

As you meander further into the wetlands that surround the Wolf, you are able to better appreciate their tremendous capacity to slow, store and filter runoff from heavy rains while also recharging our aquifers and reducing flooding. The river and its wetlands also provide critical habitat for a wide variety of plant and animal life.

The Wolf's headwaters are extremely rare in that they are the only unchannelized headwaters of a river within the entire region. Most, if not every, lowland river in the lower Mississippi Valley has had its headwater brutally altered by draglines and dredges -- at enormous financial and environmental cost.

For many years the surprising wildness of the Ghost River section of the Wolf was too much for adventurers who attempted to paddle from LaGrange to Bateman Bridge. Most who tried wound up inadvertently spending a long, miserable night in their canoes. Now, a canoe trail marks the route.

Although the trip begins on a channel that meanders through bottomland hardwood forests, the flora changes after three to four miles as the water table rises. Closely spaced Tupelo Gum and Bald Cypress trees form dizzying rows. Silver and Red-leaf maples, Hornbeam and River Birch nearly create a full canopy over the river as they compete for scarce sunlight along the banks.

Depending on the season, you may also paddle past lush, green Resurrection Ferns or blooming Catalpa trees, Swamp Rose, Wisteria and Cardinal Flowers. Be sure to look for small piles of scattered, opened mussel shells where River Otter, Mink and Muskrat have feasted along the shore. Close by, you may see numerous scent mounds made from mud, piled one to two feet high along the bank, that mark a Beaver's territory.

About halfway through the trip, small braids of river begin to split off the main channel, disappearing into a dense, standing-water Cypress-Tupelo Gum swamp before, finally, the river abruptly hits a dead end.

Only one among the dozens of narrow, twisting corridors splitting off to the left of your canoe will lead you through the full mile of swamp. The rest dissolve into a forest of impassable knees and floating islands of Itea and Buttonbush. The river seems to be everywhere, but nowhere -- like a disorienting funhouse hall of mirrors.

Hence, the Ghost River moniker.

Once paddlers exit the mile-long, dense swamp and its labyrinthine canoe trail, they will enter a more open flat-water passage reminiscent of Reelfoot Lake in upper northwest Tennessee. At this point, canoeists travel past acres of Yellow Pond Lilies in warmer weather, as well as more Itea and scattered Tupelo Gum, Cypress and Swamp Alder. This section of river has been compared in appearance to canoe trails through marshy lakes in Minnesota and Canada.

Eventually, paddlers exit the lake, gliding in fast, tricky chutes through patches of forest before the trail snakes through an open marsh filled with narrow channels of fast and clear water bordered by Sawgrass and Smartweed within an area appearing much like the Everglades. Just beyond is one of the first signs of civilization within the past half-day of river travel: the takeout at Bateman Bridge.

It was not until 1990 that Wolf River Conservancy members established a canoe trail through the Ghost River section, marking the birth of one of the most beautiful and diverse canoeing waterways in the Southeast. However, as many of you may already know, the canoe trail nearly died in its infancy.

In late 1994, a developer/timber company purchased 4000 acres of property encompassing several miles of river bank along the Ghost River section. The company planned to log the forest, then sell the cleared property for development, nearly destroying the opportunity to preserve this unique stretch of river.

Thankfully, in early 1995, one of the most exciting and dramatic environmental rescues in the state's history occurred when the Wolf River Conservancy succeeded in protecting the area with the tremendous, and often spontaneous, support of local individuals, clubs and businesses -- securing pledges for more than $1.4 million that was combined with state and federal funds to total more than $4 million within an amazingly brief period of time.

This incredible outpouring of support from citizens helped convince the state of Tennessee to purchase the threatened 4000-acre tract as the seed to create the Ghost River State Natural Area, one of west Tennessee's largest natural areas.

Additional acquisitions to protect more of the river's corridor within a greenway are planned. Your support is still very much needed to further this project.

[ All contents copyright WRC, 1996-2006. Site maintained by Sherry Weakley.  Comments? Email education@wolfriver.org
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