For thirty years, my parents have lived in West Tennessee. They are moving to another state now, and I am not sure that I’ll ever have a reason to revisit the area. So I’ve recently done a few touristy things near their home that I’ve always wanted to do. One was visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. Another was to attend the Eagle Festival at Reelfoot Lake State Park.
Reelfoot Lake is situated in the northwestern corner of Tennessee, not far from the Mississippi River, which also functions as the state’s border with Missouri. The region’s productive farmland was once regularly flooded by the river, though it is now protected by a lengthy levee. It was one of these floods that created the lake.
In the winter of 1811-12, this pocket of Tennessee and Missouri experienced thousands of earthquakes, the largest of which were felt across much of the eastern US. There weren’t many people living in the region then, but the few surviving eye-witness accounts report the earth rolling in endless waves, some large and some small. Imagine living on a waterbed.
The largest quakes sank a patch of earth and shuttled water from the Mississippi into the new depression. They also raised the land at its edge so the water couldn’t retreat from its new home. A 15,000 acre lake had been formed.
After the quakes (although there was no real after–the New Madrid Seismic Zone that underpins this area still creates an average of a couple hundred quakes a year, though only a handful large enough to be felt), the water smothered a forest of bald cypress trees. Oddly enough though, these water-loving trees do not rot in water–they still stand, a ghostly forest, at the bottom of the lake.
I have visited Reelfoot Lake many times. It is a physical, visible metaphor for the fact that often the greatest things arrive only after tremendous upheaval. The lake is thriving, pretty, and, as I heard one visitor describe it during the Eagle Festival, “completely unique!”
The woman, probably in her 70s and clearly outdoorsy, given her worn hiking pants, had presumably seen some beautiful places over her many years. But she and the other first-time visitors I overheard discussing the place were correct. I have traveled a bit myself, and I can say without a doubt that Reelfoot Lake is unique.
And not just because of its strange origins or the fact that it only recently celebrated its bicentennial as a large body of water. Not even for the fact that the lake is slowly leaking away, that another few hundred years of natural processes will it fill in, returning it to what it once was–an unremarkable patch of land.
All of those things are odd, but this woman wasn’t referring to them. She meant the lake itself, its appearance. And that is also unique.
The lake is shallow, so shallow that locals had to invent flat-bottomed boats called “stumpjumpers” to avoid the crowns of the cemetery of dead trees in the deeper sections of lake and everything else in the even shallower parts. Boardwalks constructed at the lake’s perimeter navigate visitors through its swampy edges, where they can spy fish, turtles, and tadpoles in murky brown waters.
The lake is edged by swamp and bald cypress trees. These trees are strange-looking, often with rings of knobbly knees shooting up around them–a part of their root structures and breathing apparatus. The base of the trees splays out like the foot of an elephant; their bark is wrinkled and flecked with moss. They are tall and broad, with needles that, unlike those of most other coniferous trees, turn brown and shed in winter.
These tall, sturdy trees also make excellent nest sites for the area’s most popular visitors–bald eagles.
Every winter bald eagles migrate to the lake and build nests in the large trees along its edge. They are not alone; the lake is a popular layover or even permanent spot for countless other water-loving bird species due to its rich fish and plant life. Pelicans arrive in fall, and great blue herons, geese, and ducks are not uncommon.
The eagles steal the show, though, as they tend to do. In late January and into March, one can see dozens of them in a couple of hours just by driving around the lake edge and looking up.
Which is exactly what the Eagle Festival is all about. The can’t-miss activity is the bus tour, conducted by rangers from Reelfoot Lake State Park.
When I went, there were several tours throughout the festival weekend. The day was sunny and warm for early February, in the 60s. My tour was sold-out, and I waited in line with about seventy tourists to board a pair of retired school buses. I snagged my own cracked brown vinyl seat and settled in, my binoculars strapped across my chest.
The ranger informed us that his parents had both worked at the state park when he was a boy, that he had grown up around the lake and knew it intimately. His knowledge wasn’t just learned; it was lived.
He explained the lake’s origins, drove us over small hills he said were leftovers from when the land stopped rippling. He thanked us for coming.
“This is the least populated and poorest county in Tennessee. Our main income here is tourism, from people like you who visit the lake. That’s our economy. So thanks for being here.”
He drove us past the prisons and acre after acre of farmland, which he said were the only other money-makers in the county. And he showed us eagles.
Eighteen eagles, at final count. We saw eagles sitting regally on the crowns of trees with their heads turned to the side as though posing for the artist who designs US currency. We saw eagles resting on empty nests and eagles building those nests.
One pair sat high above a lake-side parking lot as our bus idled. The male swooped off the nest toward a neighboring field, and the other tourists made noises of despair as they lost sight of him amid winter crop debris.
“He’ll be back,” the ranger said, not a confident guess but a factual statement, like he would have said that the sky that day was blue and the winter tree limbs barren, making them perfect for viewing birds tucked in their limbs.
“He’s going to get a piece for their nest. Something to impress the female. He’ll be right back.”
And he was. Before the ranger could finish explaining, the eagle had swirled back up, a piece of treasure in its beak, and rushed back to his mate.
Eagles mate for life, but in the manner of all good relationships, it is imperative to keep your partner happy.
“The male has to show her at the beginning of the season that he can still hunt. He’ll bring her fish and things to build the nest with.”
We climbed back on the bus to search for more eagles. And we found them. One was a juvenile carrying a dark carcass nearly as large as him in short hops across a field.
We slowed to watch the eagle struggle to cart the massive snack up a tree, where he then began to feast. And when we exited the bus, we got a whiff of a clue as to what the meal was.
“Is it a skunk?” called the other ranger, the young woman setting up the spotting scope. The eagle was perched at the back of the tree, his claws and what was in them not visible.
“It smells like a skunk,” she called out again. Our lead ranger shrugged in the bus’s driver’s seat. “It must be,” he said. “I don’t know what else would smell like that.”
The rangers were delighted, so this must have been a unique sighting. Eagles are scavengers, and this one was eating roadkill. “The young ones will take whatever they can find,” they told us.
Back on the bus, the scent of dead skunk gradually fading, we headed back to the visitor center. We passed more farms, more homes and trailers, some dilapidated and some tidy and well-loved, signs of poverty and also signs of tremendous pride.
We spotted our last eagles on the final stretch of road. Eagles slowly circling one another in the sky, pumping their massive wings and reaching out their claws to one another, as though preparing for a mid-air dance.
Well, I spotted them, as did a few other visitors. The birds had fluttered out of sight before most people could see them. Which felt appropriate somehow, what with the temporary nature of the entire place.
The eagles are only here for a few months and the lake only here for a few centuries. The ghost-tree statues at the lake bottom are not permanent either; they will collapse and decompose once the air hits them again. Perhaps the most unique thing about Reelfoot Lake is that it is as ephemeral as any of the lives that depend upon it. Blink and you’ll miss it.