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The Magnificent Mile is a continuing series spotlighting specific areas in Collier County. The series will explore select tracks of roadway and what makes it unique.

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Shortly after, within a few hundred feet, a small group of manufactured homes appears on the left side of the road. Be prepared — your foot should be poised over the brake pedal when you see those homes, as that little neighborhood appears just before a wild, 160-degree hairpin turn in the road. Best to obey the posted 25 mph speed limit, too.

The road is unpaved, and like any unpaved road, it has developed a surface texture over time that tries the shock absorbers. The washboard effect is not so rough as to loosen tooth fillings; nonetheless, it precludes the possibility of a one-handed drive.

The drive extends from SR 29 to the entrance to Picayune State Park, and continues through there for several more miles, although that park is not part of the scenic drive. Janes Scenic Drive cuts through the Fakahatchee Strand, part of the Big Cypress Preserve. Biologically, the Fakahatchee is a unique bit of real estate that is home to rare and endangered species, as well as lots of exotic ones and the usual Florida swamp residents of bugs and mosquitoes. But the drive itself and many of the more traveled hiking trails are reasonably visitor-friendly.

The first portion of the drive passes through wet prairie, an area open enough to spot wildlife at the right time of day, especially during the wee hours. Here and there are clumps of palmetto, sentinels guarding the private portions of the swamp. Shaggy palms pop up from the grass like skinny teenagers with bad haircuts. The prairie exudes an odd and false sense of openness; the pine forest on the horizon line creates the illusion of being a great distance away. At present, the whole area is very dry, more brown than green.

It’s not a well-traveled road, so if it strikes your fancy to take a better look at something, it’s possible just to edge your vehicle one side of the road’s center and simply stop and get out to look around. On those rare occasions when a vehicle comes from the opposite direction, both pull close to the shoulder and creep by one another, creating a peripheral sensation similar to driver’s education class, when the car seems impossibly big for the road.

During one of those stops, an eerie, silent shadow glided overhead; a turkey vulture out searching for lunch. There were high treetop breezes and he was able to soar effortlessly, riding the thermals.

As you drive, the thick vegetation slowly creeps higher, thicker and closer and suddenly the road is passing through a tunnel of swamp life. It seems as though the road, without constant maintaining, hacking, trimming and burning, would silently disappear within the vegetation, along with anything on it, leaving no trace. The denseness is something most people are not accustomed to; it can be disarming and quite uncomfortable. But on the other hand, it is busy — full of living things, noisily chirping and buzzing and a cacophony of sounds that cannot easily be distinguished or identified.

It becomes as busy to view as it is to listen; so much cluttered together, things that don’t seem like they should share the same habitat, all thrown about in no apparent order, like the contents of a college dorm room. The water levels are low but never absent; the thick undergrowth maintains its green complexion; higher up things appear drier.

What is viewed from the road is scenic; it is in the Fakahatchee, but only hints at what the swamp is really like. The words of Susan Orleans in her best-selling book “The Orchid Thief” describes the swamp and her distaste for it with unpleasant realism. The author claimed that Fakahatchee was “Hot and wet and buggy and full of cottonmouth snakes and diamondback rattlers and alligators and snapping turtles, poisonous plants and wild hogs and things that stick into you and on you and fly into your nose and eyes.... the air has the slack, drapey weight of wet velvet. Sides of the trees look sweaty. Whatever isn’t wet in the Fakahatchee is blasted. The sun pounds the treeless prairies. The grass gets so dry that friction from a car can set it on fire.”

Most books available about Big Cypress were written before Orleans’ best-seller, and barely mention Fakahatchee, if mentioning it at all. Did the swamp exist before “The Orchid Thief”? Yes, it has existed in its present form for about 6,000 years, although it existed in obscurity and innocuity until recently.

On either side of the drive, in spite of terribly dry conditions, there were still periodic pools of murky, shallow, slow water, punctuated by a population of cypress, knees exposed, crouching in or near the damp. The water was almost still; a perfect, upside-down image of lush foliage mirrored in the pools. Things were living in there; tiny ripples and splashes were evidence, with the occasional musicale ‘wake’ left by a fleeing fish. Or large bug.

There were several paths marked for hiking, and cleared, at least somewhat, of underbrush. Some places were so picturesque they seemed to be calling out for hikers to venture forth. Although there were many pleasant views and some lovely small pools of water near the road, either barbed wire or the prevalence of poison ivy nullified further exploration. The trails were calling out to heartier hikers.

Janes Scenic Drive meanders through a portion of the Fakahatchee Strand, which in turn is a part of the Big Cypress Preserve. Named Big Cypress not because of the size of the trees but the quantity of them, Big Cypress is bisected by Alligator Alley and U.S. 41, and contiguous to the Everglades to the south. In this 2,500-square-mile basin are ponds and sloughs, and the environment essential for cypress to flourish. Fakahatchee has an abundance of cypress trees; bald cypress grows in strands along the sloughs, pond cypress in large pools and nearly identical but for size, and then the dwarf cypress, emaciated by its choice of location, often older than the tall cypresses around them, but wizened and thwarted in size.

Small stands of various cypresses are visible from the road or just a short walk from it. The species need the shallow water that covers its roots for such a large portion of the season in order to survive. They are deciduous conifers; both evergreen and seasonal, that loses their needles in winter. Often draped with strands of Spanish moss, their trunks are “fluted,” growing much wider at the base and separated into many roots, appearing as though they may house cookie-baking elves in their dank shadows. The cypress has a curious formation, the “knees” which jut out of the water or soil from the roots below, and look just like wooden knees or knobs, a curiosity which still has botanists baffled.

Royal palms abound in Fakahatchee. It may seem to be an oddity to find the many royal palms growing out in the wild without their native counterpart — the luxury home development. But here they live their most sovereign existence, the embodiment of the name given to them. Fakahatchee is the royal palm capitol of the U.S., with somewhere between five and seven thousand of them within its boundaries. There are only three wild populations of the palm left in existence.

Park personnel are usually around during the day; if not they can often be found at the tiny station building on the wayside where Janes branches off from SR 29. Park Biologist Mike Owens has a wealth of information, which he shares freely and happily. In the quirky, endearing manner of the highly educated who are more comfortable amidst branch and beast than humans, he glowingly expounds on the wonders of the Fakahatchee. “It’s not so much South Florida as it is the Northern Caribbean, he explains. “To these tropical organisms, this is the northernmost island of the Caribbean.”

He is as entertaining as he is knowledgeable, and can identify most anything in the swamp instantly, with its Latin name, common name and then the name that he has invented himself for it, which usually reflects the personality of the flora or fauna.

Fakahatchee swamp is also the bromeliad capitol of the world with about 34 species — if some have not become extinct recently — and also the fern capitol, with 38 native species. Resurrection ferns abound, generally brown and obscure, then suddenly coming to life when it rains, opening up to drink in the moisture, and turning brilliant green. “I call it the ‘party fern,’” Owens explains, “because they always look so happy when it rains. Like somebody just opened the Mountain Dew.”

Fakahatchee is also home to many native orchids; about half epiphytes, and half terrestrial epiphytes. Some are tiny and obscure, others showy and colorful, but you’re not likely to see any from the road, or anywhere accessible. Sadly, Owens knows all too well that orchids that can be found will probably be poached.

He recounts a bit of history: in 1964 a county commissioner named Janes decided to convert an old railroad bed to a country road, which became the scenic drive named after him. “Once that happened, there went the rare plants. It wasn’t illegal then, this wasn’t a preserve.” About a decade passed before the area was set aside as a state preserve, but a lot of damage had been done in that time.

As far as ancient history, Owens reiterates the swamps origins. The limestone bed naturally eroded over thousands of years and was covered with decomposing materials. He recites that Fakahatchee is 19 miles long, three-to-five miles wide, and one-to-three feet deep, a significant factor. “That makes it the Grand Canyon of the Everglades,” he chides, since any amount of land depression or elevation here is a monumental element of the environment.

Some of the wildlife that roams through the murk and muck is endangered, like the much touted Florida Panther. Alligators, on the other hand, were once considered endangered, but with the merest bit of relief from oppression came back with a vengeance, and abound in this and other hospitable environs.

Cypress swamps are home environments for many birds and small animals; migrating warblers, wading birds, great horned owls, red-shouldered hawk. The wood stork is dependant on the cypress forest for its nesting; now affected by changes in the timing and water levels of the swamp, there are few areas remaining where these birds can still make a home.

Those creatures that are not endangered are shy and elusive. Park personnel keep a detailed log of everything that anyone has spotted in the area. “Recently, a volunteer saw an everglades mink at the gate. They’re voracious predators. I haven’t seen one since May of last year. They are slowly making a comeback,” said Owens.

But at the right time of day you could spot black bear, usually around 300 pounds but one record one was 600 pounds. Perhaps whitetail deer, bobcats, feral pigs or the mystical panther will cross your path. If not, there will still not be any shortage of live creatures, as waterfowl and small mammals, like raccoons and rabbits, will no doubt be around.

It seems amazing that the Fakahatchee has survived, having been raided for cypress wood when it became a popular building craze in the 30s and 40s, dammed and drained and used for real estate scams, which Orleans claimed in “The Orchid Thief” is one of the things that Florida has always grown well. Then came the poachers and thieves in search of rare plants who stripped the virgin forest of her rarest and loveliest jewels.

And yet it has survived, and is making a slow but determined comeback from all the negative events that man has inflicted on it.

As you finish your tour of the Fakahatchee swamp via Janes Scenic Drive, take a parting glance back at that tenacious, brave strip of rare land. It does have a certain air about it, a certain determination and astute humans will get the sense that the swamp will survive, resurrect itself and will return, eventually, in spite of the actions of men.