Douglass- The Nature of the Everglades

There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth; remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them (Douglass 104)

Image Source: a beautiful everglades sunset 

This quote really amazed me. I have lived in South Florida my entire life. I have taken multiple class trips to the everglades, done projects about mangroves, or saw grass, and not once did it occur to me how lucky I am to have experienced all of it.  “There are no other Everglades in the world” is such a powerful statement. There are so many other natural wonders in the world, like the Grand Canyon, or Niagara Falls, and in that category, the Everglades seems highly unappreciated. Douglass was so detailed in this excerpt. It seemed more like poetry than facts. I feel that more people should be introduced to the Everglades and all it offers.  

Source: Saw Grass

They call it saw grass. Yet in the botanical sense it is not grass at all so much as fierce, ancient, cutting sedge. (Douglass 108)

  I thought this was an accurate and humorous way to describe saw grass. When I was in 4^th grade my class took a trip to the Everglades. We went on an air boat ride and stopped to take a look at the saw grass. I’ll never forget my reaction to it. My teacher cut a piece down, & passed it around. We all felt the sharp edges and were told to brush it downwards so it wouldn’t cut us. It was so different, and so unique. After reading this excerpt I felt special to have experienced something so unique to such an extraordinary place.

There are not four sharply marked seasons, as in the North. Here winter and spring and summer and fall blend into each other subtly, with nothing like such extremes of heat and cold. Here, actually, there are only two seasons, the wet and the dry. (Douglass 112)

Source: Florida Seasons

As with all the other quotes in this excerpt, I felt extremely connected to this one. Anyone from Florida can tell you that there are no seasons here like there are up north. The leaves don’t change, and the temperatures don’t dramatically drop. We all know that the summer rains pour down every hot afternoon and disappear as quickly as the rolled in. I imagine this would be interesting to someone from a different state or country to experience.

The life and death of the saw grass is only a moment of that flow in which time, the vastest river, carries us all life forward. The water is timeless, forever new and eternal. Only the rock, which time shaped and will outlast, records unimaginable ages. (Douglass 128-129)

Source: Beautiful Everglades

 
 I thought this was a beautiful statement. The Everglades is constantly changing, and so are we. Life is short when you compare it to the amount of history and beauty that the Everglades hold. The water that was in these rivers is not the same water that was there hundreds of years ago, the waters always changing, always flowing. Only the rock has withstood the changes of time.