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“There are no other everglades in the world,” conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas wrote in 1947 in The Everglades: River of Grass. “They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known.” To sisters and , who grew up in a small town near Everglades National Park, the only way to know this river of grass is to wade through its boggy expanse. “Walking into the swamp brings you off the paved trails and into the canopy of trees, where you’ll hear, smell, touch, and see the Everglades in a much more intimate manner,” Evie says. For the portfolio on the following pages, the two photographers wanted to join as many park-ranger-led as they’re called, as possible. During these guided tours, they captured the park’s towering mangroves and thick saw grass, its iconic alligators and long-legged herons. Some of the sisters’ earliest recollections of the Everglades come from elementary school field trips, when they held baby gators and trudged through swampland. “When I got older, what remained with me were physical and spiritual memories of feeling connected to the earth,” Melanie says. “This is a subtly gorgeous place that needs to be protected. We don’t want the pictures to be the only thing left.”