"The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass"
About this Quote
Her real coup is the pivot from surface beauty to definition: the grass and water are "the meaning and the central fact". That's subtext as a pressure point. She's not just describing the Everglades; she's correcting the dominant story that treated it as empty space awaiting drainage and development. By naming the ecosystem's essence, she preempts the rhetoric of "reclamation" that framed destruction as progress.
"It is a river of grass" lands as both metaphor and rebranding. Rivers are culturally protected, economically valued, and emotionally intelligible; "swamps" are punchlines. With one phrase, Douglas converts an unfamiliar, slow-moving wetland into a system Americans already know how to respect - and, crucially, how to fight for. The slow motion matters too: it implies fragility and interdependence, a hydrology that can't be bulldozed without consequence.
Context does the rest. Douglas wrote in a Florida racing toward mid-century growth, where engineering projects promised control over water and delivered ecological collapse. Her lyric precision isn't escapism; it's strategy, a way of making the Everglades undeniable before it's gone.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nature |
|---|---|
| Source | Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), opening passage describing the Everglades as a "river of grass" (original book; commonly cited as the book's opening lines). |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. (2026, January 15). The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-miracle-of-light-pours-over-the-green-and-56006/
Chicago Style
Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. "The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-miracle-of-light-pours-over-the-green-and-56006/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-miracle-of-light-pours-over-the-green-and-56006/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.
