Sherry used a strong paddle in the front, her back and shoulders flexing each time she reached out and grabbed at the next purchase of water and pulled it back, the strings of muscle in her triceps and forearms tight as cable. But she was still a novice. She steered the canoe like she was on the inner- city streets or in a pursuit chase, looking ahead to the next obvious turn in the river and then heading the bow in a direct, point-to-point line. I could tell her a dozen times to watch the current and just let the boat flow with the water, sometimes down the middle gut of the stream, sometimes in the deeper water running stronger near the edge. But it was like telling someone how to drive, a strong-willed someone. She had stopped glancing back at my suggestions and now simply ignored me. Her action had its intended effect. I shut up.

Now, only at times would I quietly call out "turtles to the right" when I spotted a crop of yellow-bellies sunning themselves on a downed tree trunk or "snout on the left in the pool" when I saw a gator's arched eye sockets and nostrils floating on the mirror-flat surface of a pond of water off the main channel.

Sherry was also becoming adept at spotting the herons that kept pace in front of us or the rare afternoon appearance of a river otter on a sand bank. She would simply extend an arm and point in the direction and then look back at me, smiling, to see if I was paying attention.

After an hour of hard and fairly synchronized paddling, we slid out of the wooded part of the river and into the open. Here sawgrass started to dominate and before long we were at the mouth of the river-an open acreage of lowland bog and a feeder aqueduct that ran through a ten-foot-tall berm that served as a man-made border to the true Everglades. We got out and hauled the loaded canoe up the incline and then from the top looked out over the sea of water-soaked grassland.

The sky was Carolina blue and cloudless. The sun was high and even without shade I still guessed the temperature was only in the midseventies. There was a slight breeze out of the west that smelled of damp soil and sweet green cattails. The sawgrass ran out to the western horizon like a ruffling Kansas wheat field. The texture would change and shimmer as acres of grass tops moved and danced with the shifting winds.