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“Florida is pretty far from the initial point of entry into the Americas, no matter which peopling of the Americas model you follow,” Halligan told Earth magazine in 2017. Some archaeologists think that ancestors of the first Floridians may have followed the Pacific Coast to Central or South America and across to the Gulf of Mexico. Others think the peopling of the Americas was primarily overland from the western Arctic. A satellite image of South Florida shows the Everglades in brown flowing to the southwest, next to the eastern coastal metropolis of Miami, in white. This satellite image shows the slow moving River of Grass flowing southwest into Florida Bay, juxtaposed to the grid of Miami, in white. Credit: NASA/Jesse Allen After humans arrived in Florida, they coexisted in a savanna-like landscape with megafauna including not only mastodons but also giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, and dire wolves, before these species went extinct around 12,600 years ago. As the Ice Age came to a close, sea levels rose by as much as 100 meters. Florida flooded, and not just along the coasts but also from underneath: Florida’s limestone bedrock is water-soluble and very porous. This shallow water table is what feeds the Everglades, a 100-kilometer-wide slow moving river that flows over and through southern Florida’s limestone shelf, north to south from Lake Okeechobee through Everglades National Park and into Florida Bay. Lost in the Scarred Everglades Today the Everglades are a unique tropical wetland teeming with wildlife—over a million alligators, 400 species of birds, 80 species of mosquitoes, 34 species of snakes, and between 100 and 200 Florida panthers, one of the most elusive mammals in the world. The simple line-drawing map I had picked up at the trailhead was no match for the maze of old roads, unmarked paths, and animal trails running through the dense palm forest. People have been trying to carve out a place for themselves in the Everglades since 300 CE, when the first canals were built by the Ortona, Calusa, and Tequesta people to connect inland villages to coastal trade routes. In the late 1800s, the first large-scale canal systems were built to drain the swamp for agriculture. These efforts fundamentally changed the hydrology of the Everglades by interrupting the flow of water. I once got lost in a maze of roads and canals constructed in the 1960s to turn 60,000 acres of densely forested swampland into the largest subdivision in the country. After cutting 1,400 kilometers of gravel roads and nearly 300 kilometers of canals, and staking off a vast grid of 2-acre lots, the place proved uninhabitable, in large part due to the year-round mosquito population. In 1985, the Save Our Everglades campaign purchased over 17,000 vacant lots to help create Picayune Strand State Forest. I had planned a 5-kilometer loop hike on the Sabal Palm hiking trail, but the simple line-drawing map I had picked up at the trailhead was no match for the maze of old roads, unmarked paths, and animal trails running through the dense palm forest, where a panther could pass within inches without notice. Once ravaged by humanity, the swamp has returned with vigor but still bears scars. A faded blue arrow nailed into the trunk of a healthy palm tree in a palm forest The Sabal Palm Trail in Picayune Strand State Forest winds through a chunk of mature forest that was spared from logging. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton At a critical junction, I realized I had completely lost my bearings and suddenly felt like I was treading water in the middle of the ocean. Rattled, I decided to return to my car the way I had come instead of finishing the loop—but there were more intersections on the way back than I had noticed on the way out. Then, just as I was starting to feel hopeless, I was saved by a faded blue arrow on a tree that pointed me down a narrow trail that brought me back to the parking lot.