A mosquito attacks...

...causing a tilt in this otherwise picturesque scene of water-loving tupelo in the ancient Oz-Arkian sink-hole at Cupola Pond. From Doniphan, Missouri go west on U.S. 160 to Highway J and turn right (north). Continue on Highway J north 8 miles to FS 3224 and turn right (east). Travel 1 mile on FS 3224 to FS 4822 and turn left (north). Continue on FS 4822 about one mile to the dead end and turn around and park. The trails heads just northwest of the parking area.

Eight sinkhole-ponds in the Eleven Point District are registered Missouri Natural Areas that are preserved and protected. Biological and botanical oddities abound here, remnants of the late Eocene embayment bayou that once covered these areas after the ancient ocean drained.

Memoir Found in an Ancient Sink-hole

Time-traveling in the Irish Wilderness region

We are lost--these numbered dirt roads winding through an upland oak and hickory forest have us confused. Backtracking through the dusty trail, we finally head left toward a spot well shrouded in Oz-Ark legend, where an occasional strange figure creeps below the dark shadows of the gum trees and onward into a gurgling primeval swamp.

No other ecological niche we have ever encountered compares to this sudden shift from forest with low undergrowth to a discernible zone of wet arced and oily leaves. Our feet sink into the layer after layer of these spongy tupelo gum leaves that have dropped from the green canopy 67 feet overhead.

These rare swamp gums (Nays aquatica), with their widened trunks and elegantly climbing limbs, form a ring around this ancient swamp, said to have remained unchanged for 20,000 years. The understory provides easy walking for humans, and instant access for the hordes of insects awaiting the next mammalian intruder.

This pond-swamp has an abundance of herbaceous aquatic plants and provides just the right ecological encouragement for rampant amphibian and insect breeding.

— Rev. Dwight Frizzell