Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia,
1980
Photograph by Richard Perry
Water lilies flourish in the tea-tinted bogs of Okefenokee Swamp. The swamp covers an area in southeast Georgia that is about half the size of Rhode Island. Okefenokee is an Anglicization of an American Indian word meaning "trembling earth" and describes the soft, spongy peat moss that gives an unstable feel to the swamp's drier areas.
(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, the National Geographic book Wilderness Challenge, 1980)