Pat Bean's blog

Buttercup: “That’s the Fire Swamp. We’ll never survive.”

Wesley: “nonsense! You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”

— From the Princess Bride by William Goldman

Note: Yesterday I used part one of a  travel writing class assignment as my blog. The second part,  which is below, was to write about the same subject with a different voice. Do you think I succeeded?

It’s All About How You Write It

A Pogo welcome to Swamp Park — Photo by Pat Bean

A million years ago, a sand bar along Georgia’s Atlantic coastline cut a basin off from the sea, eventually creating a freshwater wetlands that extended the state’s coast by 75 miles. We know that wetlands today as The Okefenokee Swamp, a place made famous by the antics of Walt Kelly’s political comic strip “Pogo.”

I got my first look at  this home to alligators, lakes (60 of them), screaming panthers, and a dozen islands at Swamp Park, a small section of the 600-square mile whole located near where the 266-mile long Suwannee River begins life. The Okefenokee also gives live to the 90-mile long St. Mary River and both streams flow through the park to the ocean..

Park gardeners had a fondness for green animals. — Photo by Pat Bean

Okefenokee means trembling, or trampoline, earth, a reference to the land’s spongy moss base.

It was autumn when I visited but wild flowers were still growing and green leaves peeked out from the thick strands of moss that drooped from tree limbs.  In an attempt to mimic Disneyland, a  black, red and gold painted engine dubbed the Lady Suwanee took passengers on a tour around the park, past huge stands of saw palmetto, a chickee (a raised wooden platform with a thatch roof used as a shelter by Indians), and past a moonshine still. Bootleggers once found the swamp a handy place to hide from the law.

Book Report: Travels with Maggie now stands at 35,367 words.  I spent all morning rewriting, which is why you got something already written for my blog. I hope you didn’t mind.

Bean’s Pat: The Serenity Game http://tinyurl.com/bw3m6bk I like this take on “Atlas Shrugged,” a book I read at a time when I was rearranging my entire world.