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Liquid Land
by Ted Levin
Rediscovering the Everglades.
“The Everglades holds songs and secrets, the breath of another biological province, the pull of strange seasons surrounded by an immense and gorgeous sky,” writes naturalist Ted Levin in Liquid Land.
But as Nietzsche once said, “The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man.”
Perched on the periphery of civilization, half of the Everglades' original 14,000 square miles has been swallowed by development, and what remains is currently the focus of an $8.4-billion restoration effort – the largest environmental undertaking in the world.
Liquid Land is a meditation on the tranquil beauty of the Everglades, a place where “The land itself spawns clouds.” Throughout, Levin celebrates the diversity of the Everglades, heralding its many plant and wildlife species as he immerses himself in nature. “I watched hundreds, maybe thousands, of water snakes heading for a deeper marsh across a two-mile stretch of road, seething across the macadam, thickly scaled and constantly moving,” he writes, “In stillness, the sound of snake bellies rose from the pavement, a light scratching noise like water over pebbles.”
In addition to snakes, he chronicles bald eagles, kingbirds, woodpeckers, crocodiles, manatees, rainbow-coloured tree snails that come in 58 colour patterns, great white herons and Florida panthers, among others.
Levin notes, “that diversity now depends on an ironic reality – a fabricated water-delivery system. Bridled and balkanized by 1,074 miles of canals, 720 miles of levees, 18 major pumping stations, and 250 control or diversion structures, the ‘true' Everglades has become a computer-controlled watershed almost as artificial as Disney World.” The land itself is tirelessly flat – one of the features of Everglades National Park is Rock Reef Pass, which has a startling elevation of three feet – making it difficult to get water where it is needed, even with pumps.
For over a century, the U.S. government has been trying to “improve” the Everglades, most often doing more harm than good, and Levin provides us with a detailed history of the Everglades, revealing its pathology.
Chapters on the history, habits and plight of alligators and American crocodiles are equally fascinating; and then there is the Everglades' most ominous predator: the mosquito. A ranger station at the National Park boasts a bulletin board featuring a large mosquito, whose proboscis points to the day's mosquito forecast – “enjoyable, bearable, unpleasant, horrible,” or “hysterical.”
Referring to the mangrove forest that stretches from Vero Beach to Tampa Bay, Levin bemoans, “Here in the dank woods where Florida fades into the sea is one of the richest biological systems in the world. To experience it, one must brave relentless wind, fierce sun, unforgiving tides, stinking gases, and mosquitos, whose overwhelming presence cannot adequately be expressed. This is country so far beyond the end of the road that E. O. Wilson is sure that none ‘but a naturalist or escaped convict' would choose to enter.”
Thanks to Liquid Land we are able to experience the vividly-told beauty of the Everglades – where “Idle time and idle landscapes can reward a patient observer with spectacular bursts of life” – without having to endure such harsh conditions ourselves.
Levin admits that “The region's 1,800 miles of canals and levees are a spectacular plumbing nightmare that perhaps only God can restore,” but environmentalists trumpet the need for man's involvement in its restoration.
“The Everglades is a test,” environmental activist Joe Podgor has said, “If we pass, we get to keep the planet.”
Title: Liquid Land
Author: Ted Levin
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820325120
Review written by: Marc Duane Anderson
Reviewer's Rating:8.5
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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