usually full of death, but the Fakahatchee is crazy with living things. Birders used to come from as far away as Cuba and leave with enough plumes to decorate thousands of ladies’ hats; in the 1800s one group of birders also took home eight tons of birds’ eggs. One turn-of-the-century traveler wrote that on his journey he found the swamp’s abundance marvelous—he caught two hundred pounds of lobsters, which he ate for breakfasts, and stumbled across a rookery where he gathered “quite a supply of cormorant and blue heron eggs, with which I intend to make omelets.” That night he had a dinner of a fried blue heron and a cabbage-palm heart. In the Fakahatchee there used to be a carpet of lubber grasshoppers so deep that it made driving hazardous, and so many orchids that visitors described their heavy sweet smell as nauseating. On my first walk in the swamp I saw strap lilies and water willows and sumac and bladderwort, and resurrection ferns springing out of a fallen dead tree; I saw oaks and pines and cypress and pop ash and beauty-berry and elderberry and yellow-eyed grass and camphor weed. When I walked in, an owl gave me a lordly look, and when I walked out three tiny alligators skittered across my path. I wandered into a nook in the swamp that was girdled with tall cypress. The rangers call this nook the Cathedral. I closed my eyes and stood in the stillness for a moment hardly breathing, and when I opened my eyes and looked up I saw dozens of bromeliad plants roosting in thebranches of almost every tree I could see. The bromeliads were bright red and green and shaped like fright wigs. Some were spider-sized and some were as big as me. The sun shooting through the swamp canopy glanced off their sheeny leaves. Hanging up there on the branches the bromeliads looked not quite like plants. They looked more like a crowd of animals, watching everything that passed their way.
I had decided to go to the Fakahatchee after the hearing because I wanted to see what Laroche had wanted. I asked him to go with me, but because the judge had banned him from the swamp until the case was over I had to look around for someone else. I suppose I could have gone alone, but I had heard the Fakahatchee was a hard place and even a few brave-seeming botanists I’d talked to told me they didn’t like to go in by themselves. At last I was introduced to a park ranger named Tony who said he would go with me. I then spent the next several days talking myself into being unafraid. A few days before we were supposed to go, Tony called and asked if I was really sure I wanted to make the trip. I said I was. I’m actually pretty tough. I’ve run a marathon and traveled by myself to weird places and engaged in conversations with a lot of strangers, and when my toughness runs out I can rely on a certain willful obliviousness to keep me going. On the other hand, my single most unfavorite thing in life so far has been to touch the mushy bottom of the lake during swimming lessons at summer camp and feel the weedy slime squeeze between my clenched toes, so the idea of walking through the swamp was a little bit extra-horrible to me. The next day Tony called and asked again if I was really ready for the Fakahatchee. At that point I gave up trying to be tough and let every moment in the lake at Camp Cardinal ooze back into my memory, and when I finally met Tony at the ranger station I almost started to cry.
But I was determined to see orchids, so Tony and I went deep into the Fakahatchee to try to find them. We walked from morning until late in the afternoon with little luck. The light was hot and the air was airless. My legs ached and my head ached and I couldn’t stand the sticky feel of my own skin. I began having the frantic, furtive thoughts of a deserter and started wondering what Tony would do if I suddenly sat down and refused to keep walking. He was a car-length ahead of me; from what I could tell he felt terrific. I mustered myself and caught
I had decided to go to the Fakahatchee after the hearing because I wanted to see what Laroche had wanted. I asked him to go with me, but because the judge had banned him from the swamp until the case was over I had to look around for someone else. I suppose I could have gone alone, but I had heard the Fakahatchee was a hard place and even a few brave-seeming botanists I’d talked to told me they didn’t like to go in by themselves. At last I was introduced to a park ranger named Tony who said he would go with me. I then spent the next several days talking myself into being unafraid. A few days before we were supposed to go, Tony called and asked if I was really sure I wanted to make the trip. I said I was. I’m actually pretty tough. I’ve run a marathon and traveled by myself to weird places and engaged in conversations with a lot of strangers, and when my toughness runs out I can rely on a certain willful obliviousness to keep me going. On the other hand, my single most unfavorite thing in life so far has been to touch the mushy bottom of the lake during swimming lessons at summer camp and feel the weedy slime squeeze between my clenched toes, so the idea of walking through the swamp was a little bit extra-horrible to me. The next day Tony called and asked again if I was really ready for the Fakahatchee. At that point I gave up trying to be tough and let every moment in the lake at Camp Cardinal ooze back into my memory, and when I finally met Tony at the ranger station I almost started to cry.
But I was determined to see orchids, so Tony and I went deep into the Fakahatchee to try to find them. We walked from morning until late in the afternoon with little luck. The light was hot and the air was airless. My legs ached and my head ached and I couldn’t stand the sticky feel of my own skin. I began having the frantic, furtive thoughts of a deserter and started wondering what Tony would do if I suddenly sat down and refused to keep walking. He was a car-length ahead of me; from what I could tell he felt terrific. I mustered myself and caught
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