Not far from the Beeline Highway, optimitstic anglers probe Shingle Creek by canoe.

The Everglades, River of Grass, peerless natural phenomenon: It’s a classic tale of rags to riches. Backtracking this Cinderella flow, we found it drooling from northwest Orlando, scrubbing floors and groveling before the wicked step-family, with only a couple squirrels and twittering blue jays to cheer it up. Unlike the promising beginnings of the Mighty Mississippi, born in a clear, burbling Minnesota brook, the storied Nile pouring from the magnificent cauldron of Lake Victoria, or Mario Cuomo, former Governor of New York, born from a poor but proud immigrant family, the Pride of Florida shifts points of origin constantly. It depends on which Balboa Street resident is watering his lawn, suffers an overheated radiator or just spilled his drink. The source of the Everglades might even be one enterprising dog touring the ironically named Robinswood subdivision, a labyrinth resoundingly unlike Sherwood Forest. After negotiating a 300-mile gauntlet of villainy, the expanded stream flows into Florida Bay, marrying the handsome prince who nobly turns a blind eye to her accelerated old age.

“Look,” I blurted, “this is cosmic. The street’s actually named after an explorer.”

“More likely a boxer,” Mark pointed out realistically.

The question is not so familiar as “which came first—the chicken or Walter Cronkite,” but it is just as fascinating: Is Shingle Creek the source of the Everglades or is the Everglades the reason for Shingle Creek? To “developers” this southward drainage is simply a godsend that grants them dry land to build on, allowing the system to serve the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Me and Mark Benson, we just like nice places to fish.

Mark grew up riding his bike to fish along Shingle Creek, afflicting him with the chronic, unreasonable sort of affection that springs only from fond memories of boyhood. He and some buddies formed an unholy alliance, calling themselves the Florida Creek Freaks, blew up a one man raft and on at least one occasion screamed and paddled in circles to escape a large gator that probably would have behaved likewise if it had a raft. With no stained childhood to improve the aroma, I always just thought of this putrid, litter-decorated channel through industrial parks as a nasty-ditch metaphor for European man’s relationship with nature. In fact, it never even occurred to me that the creek had ever been more, that the greenish water I saw slipping under highways might be the ghastly remains of a once lush ecosystem. Mark was determined to show me that, beyond establishing a theme of abuse that will run to the Gulf, the Source of the Everglades has dignity befitting its title and great fishing to boot. I must admit his first catch was astounding.

Somewhere near Balboa Street, in suburban Orlando, is the northernmost trickle of the Florida Everglades.

Bad luck for us that in the same general area where Ponce de Leon explored mystical subtropical forest in search of the Fountain of Youth, Mark and I were trying to find adventure among asphalt and power lines, looking for water whose promise of eternal youth might be found in its capacity to embalm. Probably we sought a link with Florida’s glorious past, some assurance that Mother Nature’s drainages can be debauched and crippled, but still they remain, in storage for the day when our oil-based civilization farts out its last backfire and they can invite again the wild fauna to a drink. We had the maps and expert opinions to establish the neighborhood where it all starts, north of which drains somewhere else. Having surveyed that, we started hunting the farthest upstream crud we could fish in.

“Look at that!” Mark yelped, slamming on the brakes like Hernando De Soto would have done if he’d had a DeSoto. With appropriate reverence we stepped from Mark’s big, old, white SUV and peered down upon Infant Shingle at the bottom of a small culvert, two giants over the River Swilliput.

Sufficient hose dribbling, escaped motor oil, dog pee and other urban boons had coalesced into a 4-foot-wide, inches-deep corruption of nature rolling south. It was not so much green as gangrene, a muted puss-grey, vomited milk of magnesia cry for help, oozing over a triple-stemmed bouquet of hydrilla. Its banks were equal parts concrete, garbage and weeds. “What are you doing?” I said as Mark tied on a teeny Beetlespin.