Approved For Release 2000/08/15: ClA-RDfA,6%qEt2R000400490001 -0
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 HERE IS SOMETHING wonderful1v
 elemental, marvelously primeval about
 bog, marsh, or swamp. The waters, tile
 muck, the rushes and cattails tairly
 teem with life from the lowest forms on up
 the scale of evolution. Indeed it W;LS in
 swamps, was it not, that life first emerged
 from the sea to colonize the land? And thus
 it was with an atavistic feeling of coming
 home that I stepped into Clay Purvis's ca-
 noe at the northern entrance to Okefenokee
 Swamp on a cold, clear December morning.
 Clay, a quick-moving, slightly built nat-
 uralist-guide for Okefenokee Swamp Park,
 has spent a good part of his 22 years ex-
 ploring the inner recesses of Okefenokee.
 Like a vast saucer of tea, Okefenokee spills
 its dark waters across 680 square miles
 of southeast Georgia and northern Florida.
 Here Spanish moss-draped cypress,
 open-marsh "prairies," and piny islands
 offer ref to wildlife and serenitv to man.
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