Apparently an everglade is a slow-moving river—very slow, but always moving. Apparently the Florida everglades start up in Orlando and slowly, very slowly, make their way down here towards Miami, splitting off on the one side towards the Atlantic coast, and the other side towards the gulf of Mexico. We take a boat ride. The guide says the levels used to be lower, before they dammed and sculpted the flowing water; says that dear and boar used to walk these shores. He takes the big-fanned boat through watery canals, and then right over the top of the sword-like grasses. He points out an island—something he won’t be going over—and says that first-nation people once used to live on islands such as these. He asks how we think they dealt with mosquitos; I can only think of fire. He also mentions mud. We see turtles, and fish, and birds, and alligators waiting in ‘holes’. These everglades used to be seen as a kind of dead land; now they’re seen as an ecological asset. I have a picture of them as a kind of lungs for the breathing of this part of the east coast. All that water slowly moving; all that water flowing out.