We're Going In: The Great Baehre Swamp
A grab-bog of mystery -- complete with frog chorus, bird calls, and the ghost of a great explorer
The sign looms over the side of the road — Hopkins Road, in Amherst. The words fill you with awe.
The Great Baehre Swamp.
What is this place? You can only imagine.
You picture carnivorous plants. Mist. A troll demanding a toll, like out of the Brothers Grimm.
Who knows what else? Whatever awaits us, it will not stop us. As the great poet T.S. Eliot once wrote: “O, do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit.”
The Great Baehre Swamp is surprisingly convenient to access. Turn in, and you find a wide parking lot. A playground is at one end, and what look like substantial restroom facilities.
We are not here for fun. We are not here for comfort.
We are here for the swamp.
To my left: a boardwalk, stretching into an unruly field of vegetation.
We’re going in.
‘A foul-smelling plant’
Beneath the boardwalk, a bog shimmered with broad-leafed plants I did not recognize. I paused. I have a nature app called “Seek,” and I’m always identifying plants. I don’t always remember their names, but I do remember their faces.
Even after identifying 600 plants, I knew: This one was a stranger.
Seek confirmed it, and I caught my breath at the plant’s name.
It was Eastern Skunk Cabbage!
A sign greeted me a couple hundred steps later:
Notice how the plant on the right resembles the look of raw meat, and if you smelled it you would notice a skunky order. These characteristics attract flies which pollinate these plants. You can experience the intense smell by scratching the leaf next time you see this plant in the woods.
Oh, no thank you!
What kind of land was this, that boasts about its stinkiest resident?
Still, torpid waters
I pressed on. On either side of me were tall reeds which, thanks to my Seek app, I knew to be Common Reeds. I heard the croaking of frogs.
Gazing down from the boardwalk, you could almost lose your sense of what was down and what was up.
Creatures bubbled about the bog. Branches stretched overhead.
Onward I went. The boardwalk gave way to a trail. And the trail stretched on, through forest and field, until …. until …
… it spit me out on Hopkins Road. Back into suburbia.
I had no choice but to turn around and retrace my steps. To traverse, again, the torpid still waters of the Great Baehre Swamp.
I had a new respect for the place.
My dad used to read us the stories of Richard Halliburton, a dashing explorer who had been one of his heroes when he was a boy. A Tennessee native, Halliburton was a 1930s adventurer who packed a lot into his life before, at age 39, he vanished at sea.
Halliburton swam the Panama Canal Dad spoke with special awe of Halliburton crossing the Alps by elephant in Hannibal’s footsteps — or should we say Hannibal’s elephant’s footsteps.
One of these days we have to take a closer look at Richard Halliburton, a fascinating figure who has all but faded from memory.
But for now, let’s return to today’s adventure. The Great Baehre Swamp lets you be Richard Halliburton, for half an hour.
You will not be lost at sea.
However you will hear frogs croaking, and the Common Grackle grackling. (My Merlin app said it was a Common Grackle. That app too is free, and highly recommended.)
You will feel the thrill of imagining what lies around the next corner. And that, I say, is a fine thing.
I should do what Richard Halliburton did, and write letters to my subscribers. Imagine a postcard from the Great Baehre Swamp. I know what I would write.
“We’re going in!”
Then I will gaze down from the boardwalk, lose my sense of what’s up and what’s down — and find a little wonder in the middle of a Buffalo suburb.
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Mary Kunz Goldman is known in Buffalo for her long career with The Buffalo News, writing about classical music and authoring the long-running Buzz column as well as a popular series titled “100 Things Every Western New Yorker Should Do At Least Once.”
Further Reading
Bitter-cresses, Beggarticks, and the Great Eggfly
An introduction to Seek, the free app that helped me identify the dreaded Eastern Skunk Cabbage.
Mary Kunz Goldman’s new independent feature “We’re Going In” celebrates curious adventures around town. Previous “We’re Going In” column featured Mount Calvary Cemetery. Before that, the series explored a Goodwill madhouse known as “the bins”; a memorable Met opera simulcast; and a journey through the Junior League’s 2025 Decorators Show House.
Would you believe that 60 years ago, this was the site of the Amherst town dump? Central Amherst was covered with dank smoke every time they burned a pile of garbage. A couple of families living marginal lives had their camps and lean-tos along the edges of Hopkins Rd. This part of Amherst has numerous artesian wells. In the 40s and 50s, the Great Bear [sic] Spring Co. bottled spring water along the east side of Hopkins Rd., closer to Klein Rd. These wells are a symptom of the instability of the soils in central Amherst, leading to many foundations having to be rebuilt.
I'm so glad you got to experience The Great Baehre Swamp, Mary! We used to walk (and run) there often since we lived just down the street for over 30 years before moving a bit further away.
Having now visited in the spring, I encourage you to return during our other three WNY seasons. As you can imagine, it's a different experience as the climate changes.