Each spring, Columbus celebrates its Spring Pilgrimage, an opportunity to reflect on the city’s past, primarily through tours of the city’s oldest homes and the history they represent.
This year’s Pilgrimage ends on Sunday, but for those whose interest in the history of our community cannot be confined to a select bloc of days on the calender, there is another opportunity to study the area’s history — a history that predates even the oldest of homes and structures and, in fact, gives a glimpse of the area long before the first white settlers arrived on the North American continent.
The story of Columbus begins just west of the city at a place called Plymouth Bluff on the banks of the Tombigbee River.
Today, it is known as the Plymouth Bluff Environment Center, a 190-acre facility operated by Mississippi University for Women. Under MUW’s care, the center is host to a wide variety of events and programs, including lectures, retreats, training/education programs, conferences and even wedding/family reunions.
Now that spring has arrived, we commend to your attention one specific attraction at Plymouth Bluff that is particularly appealing — the center’s two nature trails.
Although both trails are open year-round, there is no better time to walk these trails than in spring, where many of the countless varieties of plants and trees are coming into bloom.
We are particularly enchanted with the “River Trail” which not only follows the course of the river, but turns back through a pair of cypress sloughs. It is, in a very real sense, a walk through two distinctly different ecosystems co-existing side-by-side.
It takes less than an hour to walk the trail – longer if you stop to contemplate the blooming buckeyes (yellow and red) or the “paw-paw patch” or the slough covered in bright green duckweed.
The trail is marked by plaques that alert visitors to some of the distinct plant and animal life that may be encountered along the way. It also features benches where trail walkers can sit and observe the native beauty of our natural world, whether it is a view of the river or the pristine beauty of the sloughs.
Plymouth Bluff is a treasure year-round, of course, but in the spring, it puts on its finery. There under the forest canopy with the cool breezes of spring, we get a glimpse into our ancient past and the beauty of the natural world, its remarkable diversity and its resilient defiance of the “modern world.”
As one Pilgrimage winds to its end, Plymouth Bluff reminds us that another Pilgrimage awaits us.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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