As I entered Everglades National Park from the east, my mind wandered to Peter Matthiessen’s brilliant book, Shadow Country. Set in the late 1800’s on a fringe of the everglades during a period of frontier exploration, Matthiessen describes an other-worldly place of primal brutality. A land of water and sky inhabited by exotic creatures, desperate explorers and those who have come to the end of land seeking refuge from ghosts only they knew were chasing them. As I drove into a broad sun trying to imagine such a place, the great river of grass welcomed me into her arms and I felt strangely at home.