I have grown up in the city next to the Everglades my entire life. I have walked through the swamp watched people catch alligators with their bare hands, and gone on airboat rides. The Everglades is a great place and the river of grass is a great description for it. In an excerpt from "The Everglades: River of Grass," Marjory Stoneman Douglas writes about much of the history of the Everglades. She writes about the origin of the word "Everglades." Between surveyors, map makers, explorers, and Indians over the years, this area has been known as the "River Glades," "Pa-hay-okee" also known as "Grassy Water" and now as the Florida Everglades.
The Everglades start at lake Okeechobee and runs south to the Gulf of Mexico, in an area about 100 miles long by between 50- 70 miles wide in some areas. It is mainly made up of saw grasses and Douglas describes it as very tough, rigid, and varies in color from pale green to deep brown. They are very tall , thin blades of grass.
It was interesting to find out that the Everglades, somewhere I have grown up around, has the highest concentration of saw grasses in the world. It is also great that people from all over the world visit Florida, where I have lived my entire life, to see the sights of the Everglades. Many of the tourists come during the winter months and missing the rainy seasons in the Everglades, which is when I think the Everglades is at its best and seems to have more animal life roaming around. There are tons of animal life in this area, such as the infamous alligators, but there also are Egrets, Ibis, cottonmouths, turtles, and many other different types of animals.
Below them is porous limestone, which has been shaping itself over the years as an awesome underwater scene. There are so many wondrous things about the Everglades and Douglas is very descriptive about those intricacies. You have so see it with your own eyes to even begin to comprehend its magnitude and fragile beauty.
~Max G.
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