“An elegy in literature begins with mourning someone or something that is lost to us or disappearing as we write. Its job is to build a likeness – an effigy – out of words, as it moves to the hard work of letting go.” – Susan Hand Shetterly from “When Winter Came” in Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Winter 2023.
The Ohoopee is a river, a stream of much natural and human history and greater beauty ... one of Georgia’s gems. It rises in Washington County and 119 “as the crow flies” miles south-southeast join the Altamaha River in southwestern Tattnall County. If all of the miles in its serpentine bends were figured into the total, it would be two or three times that length. It is the conduit for water flowing between the Oconee and Ogeechee watersheds. (The Canoochee and its tributaries join the Ogeechee at the I-95 crossing.) At some ridge lines, the difference between the way water will flow toward rivers is a matter of a few yards.
As with all streams in the eastern United States, the Ohoopee’s course is shaped by the geologic history of Appalachia, one of the earth’s oldest mountain chains. When the earth’s tectonic plates separated to form continents, some were ripped apart and there were massive collisions that pushed up mountains of stones, old forms like granite from deep in the planet’s crust and limestone from under the sea. Over time, most of these weathered dramatically or were covered by soil and plant life. Yet, the furrowed brow of the earth from ancient collisions remains as ridge lines that guide the courses of streams. Sometimes, these are obvious -- almost like cliffs -- but more often, they drop down in stages to the flood plains of rivers. At places, limestone thrusts up above ground or just below. There are outcroppings on both sides of the Ohoopee downstream from Highway 154. Just above Coleman’s Bridge on 154, an outcropping in the stream creates a small section of rapids (The Rocks) and at the bridge, builders found it impossible to drive pilings through the stone not far beneath the soil.
Another distinct geologic feature is the sand hills that rise on the eastern side of the Ohoopee and to a lesser extent other streams. During a very dry age, winds picked up loose soil and deposited it on exposed sites. Streams washed it away and winds moved lighter elements until only sand remained. The Ohoopee’s sand hills begin in Emanuel County and continue most of the way to its mouth. Feeder streams and erosion take sand into the river and give it a striking feature, its white sandbars at bends where the current is not strong enough to wash it away. Ohoopee’s waters would be crystal white but for tannin from trees like cypress and tupelo along its banks and in sloughs or tributaries. So, the water at normal flow is the color of tea.
Along the way, the Big Ohoopee is joined by tributaries, large and small, notably the Little Ohoopee and Pendleton Creek. Many of these have ponds including some that are called lakes, but are big ponds. Some are large, 50-100 acres. They reduce the normal volume of water reaching the river doing harm to some species of fish and other wildlife. When a dam on a big one breaks, downstream damage is significant.
The Ohoopee has long been a haven for people. Abundant projectile points and potsherds attest to the fact that Native Americans lived along it for centuries. It bore on its back timber rafts made far up into Emanuel County and delivered during high water season to the Altamaha and thence to Darien to be sold. Mills to process grain and lumber dotted its banks at protected sites and its tributaries. Smaller steamboats plied its waters into the 1920s. Families turned to it for food: the colorful redbreast, various types of bream, black perch (stump knockers), catfish, bass, even spawning run shad and striped bass until fairly recent times.
During my childhood and most of my adult life, the Ohoopee was an intimate part of the lives of the people living nearby, the river that ran through their joy. They came together at its swimming holes to meet new girls/boys, court, fall in love and later teach their children to swim. They gathered for the joyful celebration of baptism. Small town and country churches did not have baptistries. These were sites for picnics and family reunions. Dazzling sandbars are perfect for “laying out” or beach blanket courting.
My significant spot was the swimming hole at Coleman’s Bridge on the Lyons to Cobbtown road (now Highway 154), a natural choice since my father grew up on the Toombs County (west) side and courted my mother on the Tattnall County (east) side. My great-great-great-grandfather Joseph Collins moved from North Carolina to Georgia about 1795 and settled on the east side of the Ohoopee, a short distance upstream from the present road. He had a mill on a nearby creek and built the first bridge across the river, two pilings from which remained for decades before washing away one by one. James F. Coleman, for whom the bridge is named, was also my kin.
From The Rocks, the river ran at a brisk pace almost due west until it ran into a high bank of stiff soil and turned abruptly southeast, leaving a deep hole with strong currents before becoming shallow with high banks on one side and sandbar on the other. Good swimmers liked the deeps and children were safe in the shallows.
This is where I was introduced to swimming and eventually learned to do so, but not well, which was remedied by a physical education course at UGA. There was where I first met Annette, an encounter that did not work out as hoped. But three months later, we had our first date at a wiener roast around the bend at Sherm’s Fishery and we fell in love. Back at the swimming hole several months later, I was baptized by a great old country pastor, along with my brother and six others. The Ohoopee was still running high and cold, but it was a memorable moment. And she was there. For many years after we were married, we returned, celebrating our ability to swim against the current side by side. Once, I baptized others there, remembering my long-dead pastor.
I have long been aware that the Ohoopee, like other rivers, is a living thing, regularly changing its course by cutting across land that lies in the belly of a bend, leaving behind an ox-bow or slack water that sometimes fills in with sand or sediment. But I was not ready to see our swimming hole change. It did so gradually as high water often turned under the bridge east of the swimming hole and diminished the scouring power that kept it deep. An island of solid soil higher than the sand on the east side served to confine the current at the bend finally eroded. Then a huge lake upstream on a tributary broke, producing an unprecedented flood. The swimming hole was gone, turned into a long stretch of shallow water. People do not gather there now.
No doubt, my mourning for my Ohoopee is tied to my mourning for Annette. But I know that, given my disabilities, I could no longer go there, even if it were exactly as it had been in my happiest memories. I must engage in “the hard work of letting go.”
“An elegy always bends at last to acceptance, a will to move away from mourning.” –Susan Hand Shetterly
Roger G. Branch Sr. is professor emeritus of sociology at Georgia Southern University and is a retired pastor.