I spent four nights on the Okefenokee this past weekend. For five days, I saw no one at all. I had to leave straight from work and drove through the night, sleeping for an hour at a Love's and half an hour as the sun came up in a truck stop. Shortly after launching, the thunderstorms began and they poured for hours. There may be nothing worse for trips like this than heavy rain and below freezing temperatures. I saw nothing that day as I paddled through the prairie but I knew that the wildlife that was hunkered down then would be more active than usual to make up for it in the ever so slightly warmer and drier weather that would follow. The second night I arrived at Big Water, a 2 mile long "lake" along the paddling trail. As I drifted to sleep there, at one of my favorite campsites on this side of the country, I was startled awake by the sound of something large rolling through the water, splashing and exhaling brusquely through its nose. "An otter?" I wondered. The rolling intensified and multiplied. It was otters, plural for sure. I was dealing with stomach pain and struggling to get warm. I decided that if I didn't startle them then, I would see them in the daylight. The next day I found all of them. There was plenty of other wildlife and the scenery was stunning (all but the last landscape were taken from my campsites) but it was the interaction I had with another human that made the trip. My shuttle was a tall man with a long grey beard and ponytail with a Foghorn Leghorn baritone. He had a snake's molted skin on his dashboard. "How long have you been down here?" I asked. "I've been coming down here since I was a kid." "How has it changed?" He then proceeded to tell me the history of wildfires and the impacts of logging and climate change on the swamp. He talked about wetland conservation and the clean water act. He had just returned from the Amazon. And then I asked him about the Roanoke and discovered that 20 years ago he built the platforms that I camp on there himself. I am so grateful for the people who fought for these places and it hit me that one day it will be my responsibility to rebuild them.