We had wanted to get there before sunrise, so Zack and I left North Little Rock around 5:00 AM. When we got to the lake, I headed out to a spot I visited last autumn. Since this was a swamp in the summer, I was paranoid I was going to bump into a snake. I had vivid thoughts of stepping on a cottonmouth, annoying a rattlesnake, or bumping into a boa constrictor (I assume they're out there too). Amazingly I didn't see any snakes. But I was so concerned with the tall grass that I nearly ran into two large spider webs, each with a large spider perched right in the middle.
In the foreground are the remains of an old cypress tree, laying in the water like a broken crown.
A helpful tip for anyone going out to take pictures at a swampy lake in the summer: bring bugspray. We smartly managed to forget this, and I was immediately swarmed by mosquitoes as I tried to set up the tripod. A swarm of mosquitoes hovered and darted around me the whole time I was there, like the cloud that hangs over Pig-Pen.
Some of the trees here are massive. One study concluded that the oldest cypress trees in Dagmar date from anywhere between 450 and 1200 years old.
After the sun came out, and I was breakfast for millions of mosquitoes, we headed back towards Little Rock. I was happy to go home and take a nap.
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