This morning I woke up with my eyes cast west to Texas. I felt like I had three choices. One was to go back through the heart of New Orleans to Highway 23 that follows the Mississippi all the way down until you can’t drive anymore. It ends at a town called Venice. There is one town on the map farther down called Pilottown that I presume you can only get to by boat.   This choice would require a complete backtrack because all the roads into the bayou just end. On the map it appears there’s nothing down there but swamp and the river. The choice both intrigued and intimidated me, and I’m not intimidated by much of anything. Well, women maybe. 🙂

The second choice was to skirt New Orleans, drop down to highway 90 and make my way west through the Atchafalaya basin. This choice drew me because it is the setting for the stories of one of my favorite authors, James Lee Burke.

Or, I could do both and find a place to camp for one night somewhere in Louisiana. In the end I chose door number two with some regret. I spent the day being jostled by poor roads and streets probably still trying to recover from Katrina. I was hoping the route would bring the books a little more to life for me but I can’t say that really was the case. That’s not to say the area does not have any uniqueness. Burke’s novels arc their way through the old south of sugar cane plantations, nasty dives out on dirt roads, and the back streets of Lafayette and New Iberia. It is the Louisiana of old money, cajuns, crackers, gre gre and all that Creole lore.  It’s also the Louisiana of Evangeline, the epic poem that lifted Henry Longfellow to prominence in American poetry.  The story stretches from Nova Scotia to the Louisiana bayou.  From some English class way back when I can still remember those opening lines in the Prologue;

This is the forest primeval.  The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and with garments green, indistinct in the twilight, ….  

I spent some time in New Iberia. It is a town where you can see stately antebellum homes and barely more than a golf shot away are houses and shacks where the poor live, black and white alike. These houses have no foundations and most are not level. The corners are propped up with whatever is available. Pieces of railroad ties, concrete blocks, rock piles. It is a contrast that sticks in your head.

Earlier I wrote “with some regret” about my choice. I think having the opportunity to do and experience this trip precludes me from feeling such things, so I think I just won’t.  Never mind.

I am well and hope you all are too.