People expect water. They expect an expanse of black water blinking in the sun. They expect the sun to be hot and the water to be cool. They hope to find, within minutes, a nest containing writhing pythons, which they will dispatch with the swift ping of a rifle. They listen for that ping to echo. They need the echo, it seems. But each time, the sound sinks away, and they look sad, because something is left undone.
If they make a kill, that is. If I find them something to kill, if I let them shoot it. We’ve been walking for four hours and have nothing to show for the time. The saw grass prairie is dry, or dryish, just a cake of mud crusted and shot through with saw grass. Which isn’t grass, but sedge. And the mud isn’t mud, or isn’t just mud, but periphyton. I explain this in slick, simple terms. Nobody listens. They shake with cold. It is January, and it has barely rained in a month, and it is fifty-two degrees, which means no mosquitoes. Which means the Everglades is low and freeze-framed, buffed with just enough green to crown the brown beneath.
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