Georgia’s moving earth
The vast Okefenokee Swamp possesses “an incredible primordial beauty,” said Mary Ann Anderson in The Washington Post. Located “as far south in Georgia as you can get without falling over into Florida,” the 700-square-mile wetland was ravaged by massive fires in 2007 and 2011, but recovery comes naturally to a landscape like this, still home to hundreds of species of animal and plant life. My guide from Okefenokee Adventures (okefenokeeadventures.com) forced me to leave our boat at one point and jump up and down on a peat mound rising out from the swamp’s black water. As advertised, the ground quivered: After all, okefenokee is a Creek Indian word meaning “trembling earth.” The water’s dark hue comes from tannic acid released by decaying plants, and it “reflects like quicksilver.” But “my favorite phenomenon of the swamp is its utter quietness”—a quietness that transforms as you listen into “a perfectly composed symphony of nature.”
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