Listening to Our National Champion Bald Cypress

“Getting here is an excursion,” says Daniel. That’s why The Big Tree remains a mystery, for many a myth as much as a place that you can visit.

The evening before, she chose silence. Megan Poole wanted to be alone. Most of all, she needed to listen. Poole went to Cat Island Wildlife Refuge to bathe in the proximity of America’s National Champion Bald Cypress. This was pure pilgrimage, a chance to experience what the tree and its approximately 1,500 years of knowledge had to teach. Halfway down the trail, she had to turn back.

“Of course there are snakes here,” she says the next morning, laughing from the passenger seat as she sets out for another attempt to visit what many call The Big Tree. “I saw it in the middle of the trail and thought, ‘We’re all going to kumbaya together.’ But it wouldn’t move, and I wasn’t wearing my boots. A woman got foiled by a snake. How derivative!”

Beside her, William Daniel, president of the Friends of Cat Island, steers his F-250 along flood-ravaged Creek Road. “I’ve seen three snakes here in 20 years,” he says, deadpan, and now Poole laughs harder. As the truck slaloms to avoid potholes, she consumes the landscape, this mix of bottomland hardwood and upland forest, a lone black squirrel that darts into a curtain of water oaks. “Do you mind if we roll down the window?” she asks.

It’s August, cloudless, the kind of morning when walking feels like wading in a Jacuzzi, but who could deny a request when it’s posed with such joy? Daniel does the rolling for her, and Poole closes her eyes before leaning out the window. And that’s when it all begins to make sense. In her new book, “Listening to Beauty,” the Cameron Parish native examines an aspect of scientific studies that often remains hidden to outsiders. It’s the side, she writes, “that lingers in awe and wonder.” In her life and work, Poole seeks to understand “how to listen to beauty presently before us, and how to be empathetic witnesses to all we don’t yet know.” She’s come here a week after the book’s publication, venturing to Cat Island to listen and bear witness to the famous tree.

By the time Poole opens her eyes, Daniel’s truck has crossed into the refuge. Together, they catalogue the frenzy of trees: overcup oak, green ash, huckleberry, bald cypress, tupelo, persimmon, sycamore, bitter and sweet pecan. Then Poole mentions yet another failed attempt to spend time with The Big Tree. On that occasion, there was no snake, but she arrived to find Bayou Sara flooded, the single road into the refuge impassable.

“Getting here is an excursion,” says Daniel. That’s why The Big Tree remains a mystery, for many a myth as much as a place that you can visit. Even those who live 40 minutes away in St. Francisville would need to drive 10 miles an hour along Creek Road for much of that journey — and then they would only have access during the six to eight months of the year when the refuge isn’t under water.

Despite annual flooding and regular storms, Daniel says he hasn’t seen many changes to The Big Tree in the past dozen years. He turns right into a parking lot and from the back of the truck gathers a sign that marks the trailhead. Each year before the flood, he detaches the sign to prevent its ruin. The sign now back in place, he and Poole begin the 10-minute walk to The Big Tree. Daniel tells her about what visitors sometimes see here: deer, hogs, beavers, rabbits, otters, minks. “Typical swamp stuff,” he says.

“You have snakes,” Poole says. “But I have my boots now. I can be cocky.” They climb over a tree toppled by a recent storm, and after another 50 yards, they mount another. From this one, Poole leaps off, joyous. Another hundred yards, and then they reach a slight bend in the trail, and there it looms in the distance, unmistakable.

Poole stops to allow herself a moment of silence. “I see why there would be a doubt if it’s one tree or two,” she says.

“They do debate,” Daniel says. And then they approach together. For the next hour, Poole rounds it alone. She stops to speak to Daniel. They examine it together. She steps aside to write in her notebook. One by one, the pages turn.

While writing “Listening to Beauty,” Poole says she learned from her subjects to set aside preconceived notions so that she can be fully present, that some truths remain hidden until you enhance the quality of your listening. “Maybe that’s how it always is with listening,” she says. “You learn as much (if not more) about yourself as about the person, or tree, honoring you with their presence.”

When it’s time to leave, she peers one last time — for now, at least — into the hollow of The Big Tree. After a moment, she steps back. “William, how do you tell it goodbye?” she asks.

“You wave,” he says. And in one more moment of silence, Poole waves before setting off down the trail.

Location West Feliciana Parish

Did You Know? The National Champion Bald Cypress, a.k.a. The Big Tree, is one of the largest trees in North America east of the Sierra Nevada. With a height of 91 feet and crown spread of 86 feet, The Big Tree rises inside the Cat Island National Wildlife Refuge. From St. Francisville, it’s a 40-minute drive to the trailhead and less than a half mile walk to the tree itself. Public access is limited due to annual flooding that lasts, on average, between four and six months.