BOOK UPDATES: I’m in Memphis tonight, at novel., in conversation with Erik Houston of the Wolf River Conservancy—the second stop on my ten-day whirlwind lower river tour. Full details on upcoming events can be found here.
Friday, June 28: Helena, at Delta Dirt Distillery, with Kevin Smith.
Saturday, June 29: Clarksdale, Travelers Hotel, with Howard Stovall1
Monday, July 1: Oxford, Off Square Books, with Charles Reagan Wilson
Tuesday, July 2: Delta Arts Alliance, Cleveland, with Matty Bengloff
Wednesday, July 3: Mississippi Museum of History’s “History is Lunch” program
I’m also happy to report that The Great River slipped onto the extended list of national bestsellers at independent bookstores in its debut week. Regionally, it came in at #9 in Midwestern indie bookstores and #12 in the South! Many thanks to all who have purchased.
New interviews: a spot on WBUR’s Here and Now (!!) and a longer interview for Rick Kleffel’s excellent and long-running Narrative Species program.
In non-river news, I have a new story in The New Republic today, in partnership with the Food and Environment Reporting Network. It’s about a legal and scientific dispute in the Everglades. The week I spent in south Florida left me gobsmacked and fascinated. I’m taking next week off, but I’ll be back in July with more reports from Florida.
When I retrieved my kayak from the rental desk, at the southern tip of Florida, I asked whether the water was safe for swimming.
It was clean enough, the outfitter replied, but he advised against swimming: The gators were out. Indeed, he said, one had laid a clutch of eggs near the launch. When I arrived to load my gear, I saw her there, lingering, watching. Nervously, I paddled forward and she slunk away to let me pass.
I was in Florida for nearly a week, reporting, and my schedule allowed one night in the backcountry. The Everglades feature the largest designated wilderness area east of the Rocky Mountains, but it’s a watery wild; camping is made palatable only because the National Park Service has installed platforms at intervals throughout the vastness of the swamps. (“Ehickees,” they call them, borrowing a word from the Seminole.) Tom Van Lent, the scientist at the center of my story, had suggested Pearl Bay chickee as a suitable destination, reached by winding several miles through a thick tangle of mangroves.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3b4d7f19-4c28-4ddb-9618-a4acd86d8ddf_800x450.jpeg)
I might still be out there in that maze of stubby trees if not for the PVC piping lodged into the water to mark the path—at intervals a bit too irregular, in my opinion, given the several wrong turns. Eventually, the trail opened onto bigger water, which only made navigation more difficult; the markers were so distant at times that I could barely make them out with binoculars.
Platform camping is not for everyone. Fires are forbidden, too dangerous on a wooden structure. That means once you’ve reached your destination there’s not much to do: read a book; cook a meal on a stovetop. I loved that night, though. It had been several years since I’d been out in the backcountry and I’d forgotten the pleasures of making and keeping a tidy camp. It’s a small bit of self-sufficiency, but it’s enough to remind me that I’m a halfway competent animal. Besides, reading a book and cooking a meal are some of the pleasures I love best.
At one point I took the kayak a bit further down the trail, to see the next chickee, though the reward was limited. Unlike on a mountain trail, there was no new vista, just more of the same: water and tree limbs, tangled and intertwined. A few days earlier, at one of the park’s visitor centers, I’d seen a placard explaining that this national park was the first formed not because of stellar scenery, but for its scientific and ecological merits. It sounded almost apologetic—as if to placate the tourists who had come away with nothing to post to Instagram. I’m okay with that. There is something possessive about those Instagram posts. They seem to take on the air of a lord, surveying his domain.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa18c040c-ad91-4471-80fd-5e631dd9e4bb_600x800.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe189c348-d36d-46d9-be85-9b37ff1fbf85_1478x944.png)
Michael Grunwald’s book The Swamp offers an authoritative review of the history of the Everglades and the controversies up to his 2006 publication.2 Early in the book, Grunwald notes that this place features less beauty “than subtlety and originality. It was less ooh or aah than hmm.” This is accurate enough, I found on my paddle, but I quibble with the framing: it suggests that wild places are meant to be looked at.
I’ve spent years trying to assemble a more Southern notion of wildness, and, if such a thing exists, one of its distinctions is that wildness here is about more than the possessive gaze. It’s a place you have to touch and feel. That’s why, after looking for gators, I eased myself into the water, then dropped my body below the surface, fully refreshed.
The night before I paddled into the mangroves, I camped on one of the rare patches of higher ground in the southern Everglades; as I set up camp, I listened to an interview with Jon Krakauer, recorded on the 25th anniversary of his smash hit book Into the Wild. As you probably know, the book—which in some ways I consider a model for the book I’d like to write next—follows the misadventures of a young man who eventually, fatally, heads into the Alaskan bush. Part of what makes the book so powerful is the way Krakeaur saw himself in his subject, Chris McCandless: Krakeaur too was an adventurer, a climber in particular; the book’s climax, in many ways, is Krakeaur’s account of his own near-death atop an Alaskan glacier.
I was struck, listening, about how mellow I am compared to Krakeaur. I’ve never felt compelled to fling myself up mountains—or down them. I’m a paddler, mostly, but it’s not whitewater I seek, just a chance to float the rivers that form an alternate route through the world. Perhaps that’s a liability as an outdoors writer; there is profit to be found in finding an ever-more-extreme version of adventure, if only to hook the reader into your yarn. But as I paddled the maze of the Everglades, it struck me that this is a good fit for Southern nature—which is about, if anything, drifting slow and seeping in.
Roundup
🪱 A life in worms
Michael Adno writes about Florida’s “worm charmers” in the Outside issue of Oxford American. I’m delayed in sharing this, as I wanted to get the issue in print; I’m sure some of the other stories in there will get shared here over the next few weeks.
🧳 Galveston goes wild—in the wrong way
Texas Monthly examines how Galveston has become overrun with tourism.
Wright Thompson had to cancel, sadly, but I’m delighted to speak with Howard.
It’s one of the books I consulted early on, as I considered how to report and structure The Great River; I was glad this assignment gave me a chance to reread with a new purpose.