The Nature of the Everglades - Marjory Stoneman Douglas

"There are no other Everglades in the world"

(Douglas, p.104).

This is how Marjory Stoneman Douglas begins The Nature of the Everglades. This statement made me think of how people take for granted the beautiful habitat of the Everglades. I am guilty of that too. I never realized how lucky us Floridians are, to be surrounded by such a beautiful environment. More specifically, the Everglades. The abundance of wildlife, mangroves, and water is what makes the Everglades truly unique. It is evident throughout the rest of the text that Douglas really admires the beauty within the Everglades. In this video below entitled Florida National Everglades Park, it captures just some of the unique wildlife and ecosystems present in the Everglades. I have not had the opportunity to visit the Everglades, but after reading this excerpt it is something I definitely would love to do!

 

 "Then the lion-colored light shuts down as the rain does, or the clouds fill with their steely haze every outline of the visible world and water falls solid, in sheets, in cascades" (Douglas, p.115).

http://stephenskory.com/2011/09/18/a-curtain-of-rain



 

Douglas did an excellent job describing how the sky looks as it rains. This quote stuck out to me because it reminds me of how a typical summer rainfall looks like. Douglas depicted this perfectly. As I read it, I just pictured in my head those afternoon showers we experience down here quite often. I envisioned seeing the sunlight on one part of the sky, and the clouds moving in quickly, and seeing the curtain of rain in the far distance. This picture to the left is what I imagined Douglas was describing in this quote.

" To understand the Everglades

one must first understand the rock" (Douglas, p.122).

http://pytczwee90.blog.com/2014/02/11/decomposers-of-florida-everglades-food-chain/

What I thought Douglas meant by this was that in order for us to understand the big picture, we must understand the little picture. Every little thing in our environment has a purpose. Overall, this quote made me think of how something as small as an ant, or fly can have an impact on something as big as the Everglades. For instance, a fish feeds off microscopic plankton and other fishes, birds and raccoons feed off these fishes, and at the top of the food chain is the panther. I think what Douglas was trying to say is that we have to really understand what the Everglades is composed of to understand the Everglades as a whole. The picture to the right demonstrates how the food chain in the Everglades would work.