For this entry we must reflect on our Marjorie Stoneman Douglas readings from her legendary "River of Grass".

I love her. She is so poetic and had a true love of the Everglades. She did such a brilliant job creating the mystical world of the Everglades in a way that made them matter to so many. In "The Nature of the Everglades" and "The People of the Glades" she writes of all the elements that make up the everglades --the vast "velvet" expanses of saw grass, the water, the rock, and the river that connects it all. She describes the many animals and some of the early settlers that have made the Everglades home and how the cycle of life is ever important to the existence of everything.

As I read this magical work, languishing in a chaise lounge near the pool, I thought back to a rainy October afternoon in Micanopy near Marjorie Stoneman Douglas' home. I visited Payne's Prairie Preserve --Florida's first state preserve and a national natural landmark. There are wild horses and bison there. Though all of them seemed to be seeking shelter from the rain that day, so I didn't spy any of them. The only ones to brave the elements that day were a school group and myself. While the middle school kids were touring the visitors' center, I wandered off into a quiet patch of wood. I had been away from people for a few days and I took comfort in the noise of the kids, but there was a special quiet to that wood.

I stood at the bank of a stream and listened to the water trickle by me. At some point, I heard a rustle behind me. Feeling rather cautious as a single woman traveling on her own, I turned around quickly and came face-to-face with --a deer. We were nose-to-nose and eye-to-eye. Though hers were the more beautiful: so big and brown with soft framing lashes. We stood there, just the two of us, in that quiet darkened wood for a long while while thunder rumbled i the distance. I wanted to reach out and stroke her soft snout, but didn't want to frighten her. After awhile, I sensed that she wanted to leave, but didn't want me to see her. I turned and faced the stream again, my back to the elegant beast. I heard a light rustle again, and when I turned around she was gone. There was no sign of her, though I had only had my back turned for a moment. I thought perhaps I had seen a ghost.

Of course my deer companion and her clan could well become ghosts in the not so far off future. Douglas was struggling to save the Everglades in her own time and here we are over fifty years later still struggling, still fighting to protect Florida's natural habitats.

I encourage you think about our decaying global environment and of course our endangered Everglades, so important to Florida's survival. Think of this as I leave you with one of my favorite images from her iconic work:

"The first saw grass, exactly as it grows today, sprang up and lived in the sweet water and the pouring sunlight, and died in it, and in its own dried and decaying tissues and tough fibers bright with silica sprang up more fiercely again. Year after year it grew and was fed by its own brown rotting, taller and denser in the dark soil of its own death."