Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [7]
In the 1950’s, before the federal interstate highways cut the U.S. in six-lane precision, wonder, efficiency and freedom, their smaller and less efficient two-lane twin brothers politely meandered through and around small-town America—careful not to upset the balance of pecan trees, live oaks and fourth-generation chicken farms. Dotted with concrete-block, mom-and-pop motels, full-serve gas stations and all-u-can-eat buffets, U.S. 1—something like an east coast Route 66—was the life-line of every traveling salesman and vacationing family from Maine to Miami. Between the free orange juice stands, junk stores, alligator farms and state-line souvenir stores brimming with stale Claxton fruit cakes and Mountain Dew, the route represented Americana in its heyday.
Trying to stay awake, I clicked on the radio. A weatherman was in mid-report and hard rain smacked his microphone. He was yelling above the sound of the wind: “Four weeks ago, a tropical depression moved across the southern portion of West Africa. For the next seven days, the tropical storm system continued across the coast of Africa and the tropical Atlantic. After moving through the Caribbean Sea, satellite pictures on May twentieth showed an organizing cloud pattern over the south-central Caribbean Sea. And on May twenty-third, Tropical Storm Annie—so named as the first storm of the year—strengthened and moved northward. And at six a.m. this morning, Annie spun herself into a hurricane.” I turned it off and stared through the windshield. River guides, by default, become closet weathermen. We have to. It’s just the nature of the job. I wiped the backside of the windshield again. Towering pines now lined both sides of the road. I crossed her off. The rain we were experiencing had nothing to do with Annie, and given her location, she’d fizzle long before Florida.
Stretching southward from Waycross, Georgia, to the Florida border, sits a seven-hundred-square-mile peat-filled bog that hovers like a poached egg inside a saucer-shaped depression that was, more than likely, once part of the ocean floor. When plants die, they fall to the swamp floor where they decompose—a process which emits both methane and carbon dioxide—producing peat. And because decomposition is a slow process, it takes fifty years to add another inch of peat to the base of the swamp. The thick web traps the gas, building pressure and forcing the islands upward—like corks floating to the surface. As they rise, the gas is released where it glows like Northern Lights in its rise to the surface. In the mid-1900’s, visitors claimed the existence of UFOs, established tours and sought to sell tickets until scientists showed up and proved otherwise. Since their formation, the peat masses have been unstable and trembling—sort of like the earth’s plates but a bit more fluid—causing the Choctaw Indians to so name the place “The Land of Trembling Earth.”
In English, it sounds like “Okee-fen-o-kee.”
On the surface, it’s primeval and untouched. Uninhabitable to most men. For all practical purposes, it serves as the drain for the southeastern part of Georgia and northeastern section of Florida.
Drain is the key word here. Like all drains, there’s a limit to what they can get rid of in a given period of time.
When the swamp fills up, the overflow spills out in two places. It’s a lot like New Orleans but with only two holes in the dike and with a lot less murder, gambling and prostitution. The larger pipe, called the Suwannee River, winds its way about two hundred miles southwest across Florida and dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. Her 130-mile