March 2002, late afternoon
Water Conservation Area 3A, just east of Big Cypress National Preserve near highway 41

Wet prairies are transitional zones between dry prairies and marshes.
This however is a slough (pronounced "slew").  Sloughs are the deepest and most permanent inundated areas of a marsh.
Pahayokee (pa-hay-okee) is a seminole word that means "river of grass".  
I looked it up but I couldn't find a definitive meaning for the word "Everglades".  I like to think of it literally as vast expanse of glades between
tree islands and mangroves.
South Florida's karst topography, a landscape were the dominant geological feature is limestone (calcium carbonate) strata, yields sinkholes and
a labyrinth of subterranean aquifers.
The deepest part of Lake Okeechobee (Okeechobee means "big water") is only 15  to 20 deep!  This lake is a remnant of a pleistocene shallow
inland sea and the Everglades ecosystem may itself may only be 6000 years old.
During the wet season (May-October), before the Everglades was tamed, every summer the southern banks of lake Okeechobee would
overflow with water and a form a swallow river that started out 50 miles wide.  This water fanned out south and east into the Everglades and
would eventually recharge Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico with fresh water.
During our century the river of grass has been dammed and diked (U.S. Army Corp of Engineers) that must now depend on rainfall and
man-made delivery of water for its survival. The water covering these millions of acres averages about six inches in depth.
Changes in the historic water flow have resulted in habitat destruction.  In addition, many animals are endangered or threatened and wading bird
populations have been greatly reduced.
Other environmental effects include soil loss, nutrient enrichment, pesticide contamination, mercury buildup, fragmentation of landscape, loss of
wetlands and wetland functions, invasion by exotic species such as the cattail and melaleuca, increased algal blooming in coastal waters, seagrass
die off and declines in fishing resources.
The saw grass stretches 100 miles north and south from Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico and 50 to 70 miles east to west.