Curtis Morgan, the Herald's environmental affairs writer, asked this question of Jack E. Davis, author of ``An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century'' (University of Georgia Press, $34.95):

Q: If Marjory Stoneman Douglas lived another 108 years, would that be long enough to see her beloved River of Grass restored?

A: The one goal Douglas thought reachable in her original lifetime was that of educating new generations to make wiser decisions about civilization's relationship with the environment. I think the eco-sensibilities of people like herself are passing down the line and fanning out. Leaders of tomorrow, recognizing that Floridians can no longer borrow from the future, will chart a new direction for themselves. ``My dear,'' a 119-year-old Douglas would say today, ``they have no other choice.'' Their quality-of-life equation will measure not simply economic costs and benefits but ecological ones, recognizing that the struts of human existence lie not in philosophies or science but in healthful nature. Approaching the end of her second century, that ugly cinder-block sprawl of her middle years will still occupy the ravaged fringes of the great wetland. But the River of Grass will flow again -- free of the carbon footprint of bureaucrats and engineers and their machinery of destruction -- and Douglas will sit in her beloved little house with purring cat in lap (Jimmy number 12) and iced scotch in hand, and she will smile.

• Davis will appear at 5 p.m. Saturday in Room 7128. with Abby Sallenger, author of ``A Nineteenth-Century Disaster that Warns of a Warmer World'' and Ian Shive, author of ``The National Parks.''

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