The Enchanted Forest An ancient cypress swamp thrives in the
heart of South Carolina’s Low Country, spared from encroaching
urban sprawl by a sweet-talking forest guardian and visitors’
goodwill. The boardwalk is a yellow brick road of sorts, a
passage into the dim green light under pines, tupelos, and
ancient, ramrod-straight bald cypresses rooted in a sink of mud
and water. Butterflies and little golden birds gleam for a
moment in a sun shaft, then melt into the moist shadows. This
boardwalk, 1.7 miles long, is the spinal cord of the 16,600-acre
Audubon Center and Sanctuary at Francis Beidler Forest in South
Carolina’s Low Country, 40 miles northwest of Charleston. For 32
years its stout pine planks have led perhaps 330,000 visitors
into a primeval world—the real thing. The sounds of a swamp are
here: a barred owl’s sharply accented bark, the curious
chittering squeak of the brown-headed nuthatch, a resonant
chung, chung, chung of a frog unseen and, at the moment,
unidentified. The smell? As fresh as a dais