More than one reader has contacted me asking how I managed to explicitly portray the Great Dismal Swamp in “Escape To The Maroons.” Since that was my intent, I’ll take the compliment. But after visiting the place, I don’t know that any writer can truly describe how extreme surviving there must have been.

When I traveled to Virginia and spent a day touring the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, a Ranger drove me around to show me several highlights, including Lake Drummond. Today’s footprint of the swamp is significantly smaller than during the 1791 period I write about. Commercial interests have encroached along the borders by filling in wetlands. Inside the still massive swamp are roads, walking trails, and canals. Swarms of mosquitoes and other biting insects, twenty-one kinds of snakes, and a variety of predators still abound. When working in the field during spring, the Ranger told me that she had to wear two Tyvek suits and fully cover her face. Due to springtime mosquitoes, on a warm day, she would be soaked in twenty minutes.

At the end of our tour, I headed away, parked the rental car at a random spot, and took off walking. Quickly, I was slogging through patches of water, pushing aside bushes, and seeing nothing but miles of the same as far as my eyes could see. The same topography confronted fleeing slaves. Likely with a bounty hunter on their tail, in what direction should one even go? There were mosquitoes back on the plantation, but here they are so thick that at times it’s hard to see through their cloud. How does one begin to find anyone in this 2,000-square-mile morass?

It didn’t take long before I was back in the car, blasting the AC, and scratching my bites. What first attracted me to the story of these amazing people had just been reinforced, and today’s conditions are not nearly as foreboding as in the pre-1800s.    

Take your life today. Could things ever get so desperate that you would consider fleeing to a place like the picture above? Maybe you are carrying a sack with some spare clothes, a bit of food, a water gourd, and perhaps a hatchet you stole.

At that moment, what might anyone feel and think facing that endless expanse? To escape the brutality of slavery, what choice was there other than to walk ahead? Some died before they found people to help them? Somehow, the network of Maroon residents and Indigenous Natives often found new runners and took them in. As one Maroon resident said about that first step, no matter how bad it looked ahead, this place meant freedom.

In my book, the Great Dismal Swamp had to be as much of a character as any of the individuals I wrote about.