"There are no other Everglades in the world."
--Marjory Stoneman Douglas
The Everglades first came into my consciousness in 2003 when I lived and worked in Everglades National Park for a month as Artist in Residence. I hiked, explored, wrote, read, followed rangers on the Anhinga Trail, in Mahogany Hammock, and waterside in Flamingo, learning as much as I could absorb. I am still doing all of those things, still investigating the mysteries not only of this remarkable place but also of my profound response to it.
The Everglades: Stories of Grit and Spirit from the Mangrove Wilderness by Anne McCrary Sullivan & Holly Genzen (Pineapple Press, 2021)
The mangrove areas of Everglades National Park are remote, accessible only by boat, complex and difficult to navigate. In this book, we hear 21 stories in the voices of people who have ventured into this wilderness–for scientific work, artistic work, search-and-rescue, personal renewal or pure adventure.
They tell stories of manatee rescue, shark encounters, beaching whales, storms and strandings, stories of environmental value and threat, wild beauty, personal enchantment and spirit. Together these stories reveal a world beyond the reach of most travelers. They also offer support and enticement for the intrepid few who may venture out there and return with stories of their own.
Paddling the Everglades Wilderness Waterway by Holly Genzen & Anne McCrary Sullivan (Menasha Ridge Press, 2011)
The 99-mile Everglades Wilderness Waterway winds through labyrinthine mangrove channels of the western Everglades. It is on many paddlers’ bucket lists. This guide leads adventurers through the eerie beauty of mangrove forests, down shining tidal rivers that link the interior to the Gulf of Mexico. Among these streams and mangrove islands, ancient tribes and early pioneers once fished and found their way. 
In addition to providing maps and detailed route descriptions, this book offers great reading in the tent at night. Its sections on plants and animals offer a wealth of detail and anecdote.
For shorter journeys, the book maps out 17 day and overnight trips, out of Everglades City in the north, and Flamingo in the south.
Photo of waterlogged guidebook at Roberts River Chickee by Adam Levin.
Ecology II: Throat Song from the Everglades by Anne McCrary Sullivan (WordTech Editions, 2009)
This collection of poems renders the ecology and dynamics of the Everglades in ways that also probe the human heart. The poet keeps a laser eye on subtle details of animal behavior, plant properties, and natural forces as they become metaphorically expressive of human love, loss, joy and renewal.
“When Anne Sullivan walks “two miles into human silence” what she hears–what we hear–are the “low groan(s) of pig frogs,” insects that “whirr, vibrate, click,” in short the world of Florida’s Everglades comes alive in all of its magnificent natural and bizarre detail.”
–Michael Collier, Dark Wild Realm
“Weeping for beauty / replaces weeping for grief,” writes Anne Sullivan. But it’s the strangeness in that beauty that grows from grief as this poet enters and tracks and takes to heart the rich complexity of the natural world, its kestrel and heron, its alligator and estuaries, its fig and fern and spatterdock. A fierce eye is at work here, honed to surprise, to the truly mysterious.” –Marianne Boruch, Grace, Fallen from
Everglades by Lisa Elmaleh (Zatara Press, 2016)
Essay and Poems by Anne McCrary Sullivan
In Everglades, Lisa Elmaleh returns to her native South Florida to examine her native landscape, photographing the flora and fauna of the Everglades. Inspired by early landscape photographers of the American West, Elmaleh uses a large format 8 x 10 camera and a 19th century wet collodion glass negative process. The process requires that images be exposed and developed on site, using a portable cardboard darkroom.