Its passing had helped create the high pressure and the accompanying clear sky and low humidity that now blessed us. At seventy-five degrees I could paddle all day and in high water we could keep a nearly straight course on the GPS reading. For the first hour I kept us moving due south in the open channel alongside the berm. As we neared the Loxahatchee Recreation Area, we struck out west onto the sawgrass plain and into what author and conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas made famous as "the river of grass."

We ran through about a quarter mile of six-foot-tall sawgrass and around some outcroppings of melaleuca until we came upon an obvious airboat trail. The flat-bottomed airboats cruise regularly across the close-in Glades. With their propeller airplane engines mounted on the back to provide the push, the boats can glide across the water and over even the thickest patches of grasses and small-diameter trees. Having slapped down the vegetation on the most frequently used trails, they have effectively created six-foot-wide waterways cutting through the grasslands. We took advantage. The open-water strips make canoeing a simpler task but beware if one of the wind machines catches you on its freeway at high speed. The safe part is that the raw, ripping sound of an airboat engine at full throttle can be heard a quarter mile away, which gives you plenty of time to ease your canoe off into the sawgrass to avoid being swamped or run over. Today, it was silent.

There is something of a physical hush in the tall grass here. I believe it is the heat, the slow simmer of the Florida sun trapped in the quiet water, and the smell of wet stalks and green lilies. On occasion the wind will pick up and there is a brushing sound just above our heads and then the call of an anhinga or wood stork passing on wings above.

"What is it that you like so much about being out here, Max?"