Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!
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The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
(published 1947 )
I’m wrapping up a family trip to Florida, combining visiting the folks (taking the kiddos to see their grandparents) with a bit of sightseeing — including, I hope (writing this before I leave) a tour of the Everglades. And while Carl Hiassen is the author I truly associate with the Everglades, I thought I’d share some thoughts by a woman who wrote extensively about the Everglades and was a champion for its preservation.
There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them; their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of the their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.
What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!
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Bookshelf Fantasies 
What a lovely quote! I like very much the description of the scenery 🙂
Aeriko @ http://thereadingarmchair.blogpsot.com
Thank you! I actually go to go there today… and it was amazing!
Great quote! It paints such a beautiful picture 🙂
Have a great day,
Amy x
Thanks! I hope you’re having a great Thursday!
You can sense her love for that land. It’s nearly touching.
I love the concept of a “river of grass” — and after visiting today, I understand the description so much better!
I’ve always loved that term “the river of grass”, and hope to go back there again sometime- it’s been many years since I was there as a kid. That’s a great quote.
I just went today! It was beautiful.
The Everglades is on my list of places to see.
Now that I’ve been, I feel like everyone should see it at some point in their lives! It was quite remarkable, and I was surprised by seeing what a “river of grass” is like in person. It was really beautiful, and I”m so glad I went!