WET 'N" WILD

No longer just a place of alligators and outlaws, the Everglades are today a prized, unique environment—a national treasure. Stanley Stewart ventures into America’s biggest swamp.

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AT SHARK VALLEY, I took a rental bike and set off in the direction of an observation tower. The path led across a watery prairie feathered with saw grass. It was late in the day, and I was alone. Great blue herons watched me from behind banks of water lilies. Dragonflies balanced on the tips of the grass. A nightjar passed, flying low with its mouth open for insects. Not far from the path, on a raised island of trees, a dozen turkey vultures had gathered: a malevolent welcoming committee, folding and unfolding their wings, hopping from perch to perch.

Then I came upon the alligator, sleeping on the path like an elderly gent snoozing on a porch. Almost 12 feet long, it was so still it looked like a stuffed artifact, an exhibit from the age of dinosaurs, a creature from some black lagoon. I wheeled the bike slowly past, hoping not to wake him. But he sensed movement and opened one eye, watching me go by. From the top of the observation tower I looked out over a vast sea of grass, rippling with waves of wind, broken here and there by cypresses. Everglades National Park is like no place I have ever seen. This could have been the world after the Flood, narrow tongues of land only just emerging as the waters retreated. It seemed a world half-made, a place of base elements—land, water, and sky—arranged in sweeping horizontal bands.

But the simplicity is deceptive. The Everglades are a complex natural world, and one of the most biodiverse habitats in North America. Occupying a great swath of southern Florida, the park teems with life in strange and sophisticated forms—plants that absorb nutrients from the air; trees that grow knee-deep in water; antediluvian alligators weighing up to a thousand pounds; elusive panthers that stalk, ghostlike, through the night; marine mammals once mistaken for mermaids; fish that walk on land.