Swampitude: Escapes with the Congaree explores and meditates upon the social, literary, historical, personal, ecological, psychological, and political meanings of a swamp: swamps in general, and a particular swamp, the Congaree in the center of South Carolina, which has been designated a United Nations Biosphere Reserve and is now Congaree National Park. A magical place of escape and fecundity, the Congaree Swamp, emblematic of all such often forbidding terrains, is the largest old-growth river bottom forest in the United States. It is in the American South and has filtered much of that region's history. The Congaree is also lucky to have gathered an environmental movement, escaped the fate of most similar wetlands, and to continue to flood, drain, and provide refuge for all creatures in need of it. This book celebrates the survival, the stories, and the continuance of such places.