I have a new article out in Science News Explores, and I’m very excited about it. It’s about the Okefenokee swamp. The thing is, I like swamps. I like the quiet of a swamp. I like the wildlife, the spooky sounds, the still water, the feeling you get deep in a swamp that you’ve somehow slipped back in time. As one of my sources in the SNE story said of the Okefenokee, swamps are primeval.

So why do swamps get such a bad name? In the popular imagination, monsters live in swamps. Greedy, compromised politicians are said to be swamp creatures. But real swamp creatures are neither greedy nor monsters. The Okefenokee, for example, is home to woodpeckers and river otters, black bears and bobcats, enough frogs to fill the night with an amphibian symphony. Some people may consider alligators (the Okefenokee has 15,000 of them!) and water moccasins to be monsters, but I don’t. I think they, too, are lovely, amazing animals.

The swamp itself is pretty amazing, too. It filters water, absorbs flood water, and releases water back into the environment after a drought. And peatland swamps, like the Okefenokee, store more carbon than all the planet’s forests combined. A swamp is an interconnected web of ecosystems that sustain each other and sustain the rest of us.

Swamps are also keepers of secrets. And that’s certainly part of what makes them feel so magical. We don’t know what’s going on beneath those still, dark waters. Earth has been doing its thing since long before we were here, and will carry on long after we’re gone. I find that very comforting.

In any case, I hope this story about the Okefenokee reminds us that swamps do a lot of good. We should give them the respect they deserve.

’til next time, stay curious,

Avery

Photograph by Joe Cook