By Mary Ann Anderson
From Tribune News Service
Call it what you will — primordial, mystifying, daunting, backwater or, above all, magnificent in that swamp sort of way — the Okefenokee Swamp is one of Georgia’s most beloved treasures. Covering some 700 square miles in southeastern Georgia and the very northern reaches of Florida, the Okefenokee, whose name means “Land of the Trembling Earth” in the Creek language, is now part national wildlife refuge and part privately owned park that is widely known for harboring an incredible cache of biological and ecological wonders.
The swamp’s dark, coffee-colored water is the base for a living jumble of pine, cypress, swamp, palmetto, peat bog, marsh, island and sand ridge. A hodgepodge of animal and bird life — among the hundreds of species are black bear, alligators galore, snakes aplenty, deer, anhinga, osprey, and sandhill crane — call the swamp home….