I waded in, the cold water numbing my ankles, and carefully turned the rock. For a moment, I saw nothing but gravel and a crayfish scuttling for cover. Then a shape shifted—a dark, wrinkled form, almost the color of the creek bed itself. It had a flattened head, beady eyes, and fleshy folds of skin running down its sides like ill-fitting drapes. The hellbender didn’t flee. It just slowly waved its body, absorbing oxygen through its skin, utterly indifferent to my presence.
In the morning, I packed up and left a donation in the rusty coffee can nailed to Roy’s post. On the back of a receipt, I wrote: “Saw Betsy. Worth the trip.” hellbender campground ohio
“Only one way to know.”
The campground became the unofficial base of operations. Volunteers camped there for weekends of electrofishing surveys and water sampling. Local kids from nearby Glouster painted wooden cutouts of the mottled, wrinkly salamanders, which the campground owner, a gruff former miner named Roy, nailed to every picnic table post. I waded in, the cold water numbing my
I looked back at Roy. He was smiling.
I first heard about it from a retired herpetologist named Dr. Marian Ellis. I’d met her at a diner in Athens, Ohio, where she was nursing a cup of coffee and dissecting a stack of topographic maps. When I mentioned I was writing about unusual roadside attractions, she laughed—a dry, rattling sound. It had a flattened head, beady eyes, and