Floating along in a 21-foot aluminum boat, pinballing in between partially submerged tree trunks and ducking under willow branches, it occurs to me that calling this place the Land Between the Rivers may be a bit misleading.

The name may be accurate from late summer to spring, as it dries out to become a criss-crossing mishmash of streams, swamps and small lakes between the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers, and a vital filter for all the runoff of most of Alabama before it reaches the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and then the Gulf of Mexico.

But at this time of year, in late April, it’s more like a lake between the rivers. There’s no land to be found here, and the tree trunks shooting out of the water are the only indicators that there’s solid dirt somewhere below the water line.

“In the late summer to fall, all of this will be dry land,” said Jason Throneberry, freshwater programs coordinator for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama, and captain of our expedition into the swamp.

Earlier this year, The Nature Conservancy, along with Patagonia’s Holdfast Collective and an anonymous donor, purchased nearly 8,000 acres of this sometimes-land in Clarke County for permanent conservation.

The $15 million land purchase will ensure that this stretch of swamps or land or lakes will always be there to protect the Delta, which is often called “America’s Amazon,” thanks to the stunning biodiversity of plants and animals that live here.

“It’s a phenomenal place in terms of the diversity of trees and plants, fish life and aquatic life,” said Pat O’Neil, a retired biologist with the Geological Survey of Alabama who now works with The Nature Conservancy and accompanied us on the journey.

“At this time of year in particular [the newly purchased land] is very impressive because it becomes essentially one large lake between these rivers, and then continues that way all the way down through the Delta.”

As we move deeper into the land, the water changes from the muddy brown of the Tombigbee to a clear, dark color that belongs to this particular swamp.

Throneberry navigates the boat through a forest of tree trunks jutting out from the water, bumping into a few, as he motors us toward an open pathway into the thicket.

That’s the road, he explains, even though it’s submerged about six feet beneath us, according to the boat’s depth-finder.

The boat’s GPS also shows us traveling over land, well away from the blue squiggly line winding its way from the Tombigbee River towards the Alabama.

The Land Between the Rivers literally anchors the Delta in place by trapping sediment, debris and nutrients flowing downstream from the two main rivers.

“In seasonal flooding like this, that’s what really keeps this [land] here, because it adds sediment,” Throneberry said. “It’s not washing away, it’s actually depositing sediment. And that soaks up nutrients, and that’s the reason you have a lot of fishes that move up into this freshly flooded water to feed.”

And it makes for some great fishing on its own. A handful of fishermen have motored past us since we entered the property, and there are several houseboats/portable fishing camps in varying states of repair anchored along the tree lines.

Before the property was purchased, it was known as the Mobile River Sawmill Division tract, owned by a timber company in south Alabama.

From this boat driving through the middle of the woods, it’s easy to imagine what would happen if that land were cut for timber.

Loose earth no longer anchored by living trees breaking apart in chunks and floating downstream, smothering the Delta with even more sediment than it already gets.

“Sixty-plus percent of all the water in Alabama flows through here and ultimately down into Mobile Bay,” Throneberry said. “So this is this is a huge filter, first of all, for all that, but also it’s just, it’s just the coalescence of all that together. Which is just, that’s why it’s so big and beautiful.”

“It’s one of the key things about keeping the ecosystems structured as they are here, in a natural state,” O’Neil said. “This drives a lot of what happens in the downstream part of the Delta, and then that drives what happens in Mobile Bay.

“And that’s so important, that whole dynamic of sediment and stream flux through here.”

We entered the area from the Tombigbee side, taking a small inlet near a place called Hal’s Lake.

The water is up on this late April day, but a few weeks earlier it would have been even higher.

Throneberry said that three weeks earlier, parts of the forest that he’s now having to navigate were completely submerged. The taller trees show waterline marks about 10 feet up from the current status quo.

The boat bounces off a few trees on the way and O’Neil uses his hands to push off and keep us on course.

Eventually we find dry land, which is of course covered in a blanket of poison ivy. It’s April in Alabama, after all.

Some years, O’Neil said, the waters rise higher than others, and if there’s a spring drought, more of the land stays exposed. But that’s part of the cycle, too. Dry years give the young seedlings of oak and willow trees time to take hold and grow tall enough to withstand the floods.

“It takes a really special dance for the trees to fruit out, drop their fruit and the babies get enough growth to keep their head above water,” Throneberry said. “You’ll see very little underbrush, you’ll see very little new tree growth or anything just because it stays so flooded for a majority of the year.”

And of course, there’s the litany of shorebirds – herons, egrets, ospreys, cormorants – that can be found in just about any body of water in Alabama large enough to offer a steady supply of fish.

We stop for lunch, tying off to a convenient tree trunk in the shade. It’s mostly cloudy and overcast, but that just keeps us from sweating too much. Pretty much the perfect spring day to be out on the water.

A massive caterpillar drops off O’Neil’s hat, and ends up in the water. Some kind of fish will have an easy meal. A spider the size of my hand skirts across the surface of the water behind Throneberry as we finish our sandwiches, but he’s on a roll talking about the importance of this spot to parts downstream.

I don’t mention the spider, even though it’s one of the biggest I’ve ever seen in the wild.

It’s just another part of what’s being preserved with this latest conservation purchase.

The land has been saved, even if there’s still some uncertainty about what happens next.

Mitch Reid, state director of The Nature Conservancy in Alabama, told AL.com earlier this year that the intention is ultimately to preserve the land in perpetuity through an entity besides TNC. They’re not really designed to hold land permanently, he said. Ultimately the land could be donated to Alabama’s Forever Wild program or a federal entity for preservation.

Reid said the idea is to have the land available to the people of Alabama, at least the ones that can get here. There’s a hunting club that operates on these lands and Reid says there are no plans to stop hunters or fishers from using the property.

But for now, this sometimes land between the rivers has avoided the sawblade, and that, for Reid, is a great start.

“It is our intention that, in some form or other, this is going to be preserved for the people of Alabama and available for the people of Alabama,” he said. “Now we have to explore the opportunities for somehow making it public, bringing it to the people.”