Floodplain Forests

While canoeing village creek with Maxine Johnston, a local old-timer and vocal activist who has paddled this river countless times, I could hear the laughing cackle of the pileated woodpecker echo deep inside the cypress-oak floodplain. On this cloudy day, we had viewed the river just as the American Indians and early settlers knew it—by the riverways, creeks and bayous.