United States
Everglades
A river of grass fifty miles wide and six inches deep, prowled by alligators and panthers.
The water moves so slowly you cannot tell it is moving at all. Sawgrass stretches to every horizon, broken only by the dark hump of a mangrove island or the sudden, motionless shape of an alligator sunning on a mud bank. The air is thick with humidity, the hum of insects, and the brackish smell of a landscape that is neither land nor sea but something stubbornly in between.
The Everglades in southern Florida is not a swamp but a slow-moving river — sixty miles wide and six inches deep — flowing south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay at roughly one mile per day. It is the only place in the world where American crocodiles and American alligators coexist, sharing the brackish transition zone at the park's southern tip. The Anhinga Trail's boardwalk passes so close to nesting birds that photography without a telephoto lens is entirely possible — anhingas breed directly above the path without fear of walkers. Flamingo, the park's southernmost point, has a single road in and out that floods above drive level in wet season, isolating the campground after dark. The Everglades ecosystem encompasses 1.5 million acres and provides the drinking water supply for over eight million Floridians — a fact that makes its preservation as much a practical matter as an ecological one.
Family
Alligators beside the boardwalk, manatees in the marina, and roseate spoonbills wading in the shallows — the Everglades puts wildlife encounters within arm's reach of children without requiring a difficult hike.
Couple
A canoe through the mangrove tunnels at dawn, with no sound but paddle strokes and bird calls, offers the kind of solitude that Florida's coasts cannot. The Everglades' emptiness is its luxury.
Solo
Solo kayakers exploring the Wilderness Waterway — a ninety-nine-mile paddle through mangrove islands — find in the Everglades a landscape that demands self-reliance and repays it with utter isolation.
- The Everglades is not a swamp but a slow-moving river — 60 miles wide and 6 inches deep — flowing south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay at one mile per day.
- American crocodiles and American alligators share the brackish transition zone at the park's southern end — one of the only places in the world where both species coexist.
- The Anhinga Trail's boardwalk passes so close to breeding birds that photography without a telephoto lens is possible — anhingas nest directly above the path with no fear of walkers.
- Flamingo, the park's southernmost point, has a single road in and out that floods above drive level in wet season, isolating the campground from Homestead after dark.
Gator tail bites fried golden at a roadside airboat tour stop.
Stone crab claws cracked with mustard sauce in nearby Everglades City.
Cuban sandwiches from a pressed plancha in Homestead, the last town before the swamp.
Wistman's Wood
England
Twisted ancient oaks dripping with moss in a silence so deep it hums.
Imber
England
A ghost village frozen in 1943 where wildlife has reclaimed the empty cottages.
Nawamis
Egypt
Circular stone tombs a thousand years older than the pyramids, strewn across empty Sinai plateau.
Qaret el-Muzawwaqa
Egypt
Painted Roman tombs in golden cliffs where zodiac ceilings survive in desert-sealed air.
Lander
United States
A river vanishes underground and resurfaces a quarter-mile later in a pool of giant trout.
Craters of the Moon
United States
A lava field so alien that NASA trained Apollo astronauts on these flows for moon missions.
New Orleans
United States
Jazz spilling from doorways at 2 a.m. while beignet sugar dusts your collar.
Savannah
United States
Spanish moss dripping into squares where horse hooves echo on cobblestones after dark.