Bogged Down in the Everglades

摘要

In 1892, a team of surveyors set out across the Everglades to see if a railroad line could be built from Fort Myers to Miami. A few days of struggling through thigh-deep muck and razor-sharp saw grass convinced them that this was no place for a survey crew, much less a railroad. "The bog is fearful," the expeditions log noted. Later one crewman recalled, "I thought that we were great idiots to come into such a place when we had no wings with which to fly out." A century later the "fearful bog" is only half as big as it used to be and so dysfunctional that some parts are too wet and others too dry. Yet the River of Grass—as author Marjorie Stoneman Douglas called it—still retains the power to defeat everyone who tries to master it.