Little Houses on the Prairies

Okefenokee Photography by William Wise. A nature photo journal exploration of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, the Land of Trembling Earth, one of the largest blackwater swamps in North America. The alligators, birds, snakes and wildlife of Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Stephen C Foster State Park. -- "What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at Your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations." Psalms 104 The Message

Okefenokee Swamp landscape panorama of Chesser Prairie. Blue sky and clouds over Neverwet Golden Club plants and water lily pads. Cypress houses and hammocks on the horizon. Canoe paddling trail through the National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia, USA.

An excerpt from Suwannee River, Strange Green Land by Cecile Hulse Matschat, 1938.

"​The prairies – the swamp folk’s name for the open flooded marshes – are filled with a tropical luxuriance of water plants and resemble wide grassy meadows. They are dotted with wooded islets, commonly called ‘houses’ because they have enough dry land to furnish camp sites for the hunters of deer, bear, wildcats, raccoon, otter, and other small animals that live in the swamp. Maiden cane growls in dense green masses three or four feet high, and there rice rats and Florida water rats, together with the bittern, make their nests. Katydids sway on the green tips in the sunshine and dive from them into the cool water. Gators travel over the prairies from one pool to another, through acres of white and gold water lilies, beds of cream-white arrowheads and bluish pickerelweed. They are often the swamper’s trail blazers; the boatman finds easier poling down the lanes that the gators have opened through the thick reeds and water plants.” Page 34

​Cecile Matschat’s work published in 1938 by the Literary Guild of America is full of colorful stories of the Swampers that lived in the Okefenokee, exciting folklore encounters with bear, boar and cannibal alligators, as well as scientific descriptions of the flora and fauna of the great swamp. It a worthwhile purchase if you come across a used copy of this collectible out-of-print treasure of Okefenokee literature.