Okefenokee Swamp | Blackwater, National Geographic Magazine: Daily Life Of William McKinley Crews

Steam rises from a bowl as a man in overalls fires up a wood stove in his modest house.

Elderly bachelor William McKinley Crews lived his life on his 160-acre farm in Moccasin Swamp that borders the Okefenokee Swamp. He began a typical day wearing his “morning hat,” a paper sack, cooking breakfast on a wood stove and pumping water from a well. Having no running water, electricity or telephone, Crews lived mostly in isolation with his fourteen cats and four heifers he jokingly calls his “nuns.” Locals called him the “last of the old swampers.”