Arising at dawn, we put the boats in the water, climbed in, and shoved off. It was the last day of our trip. At the west end of Sunday Bay, we paddled out of the Wilderness Waterway, then headed west on the Hurddles Creek Route through the ultra-shallow Cross Bays. Within an hour, Bill and I came to Hurddles Creek, a small creek that was bordered by extremely thick stands of mangrove. A short time later, the creek opened into Mud Bay, which was less than a foot deep in many places. The last mile of Hurddles Creek went quickly, then we arrived at the Turner River.

This river is named for the guide who, in 1857, led the U.S. Army up the river as they attempted to drive Seminole Indians from the Everglades, in an effort to drive them out of Florida. The army paddled up the Turner, then marched through the interior swamps to destroy some Seminole villages. When the expedition's leader was killed in an ambush, it brought an end to the Third Seminole War. The remaining Seminoles formed the nucleus of the Southern Florida tribes currently located on reservations in the Everglades.

As we paddled downstream, we passed a nearly vertical Calusa shell mound that reached 19 feet in height-lofty, by Everglades standards. I tried to imagine the generations of families gathering and consuming the shellfish to make such an enormous mound. Bill led the way into Chokoloskee Bay, and we paddled the final three miles on the Causeway Route. The busy bay made for a fitting reintegration into the "real" world. The past five days were packed with memories, from dolphins to the world's best sunsets, to delicious, fresh-caught sea trout, to the eeriness of Watson's Place.

I still had miles to paddle before completing the book, however, I looked forward to slipping back into my kayak to create more memories, for, as Marjory Stoneman Douglas put it in the opening sentence of her book, "There are no other Everglades in the world." And there is no other experience in the world like paddling the Everglades.

Johnny Molloy, of Knoxville, TN, is the author of A Paddler's Guide to Everglades National Park.
This is the tenth outdoor guidebook he has written. Molloy can be reached by way of his web site: www.johnnymolloy.com.