Swamp Stompin'

I got a chance to get out and see the landscape last night. I took a local road that ran beside Lake Ponchartrain here in Louisana. I quickly entered a world that is not quite water and not quite land. I stopped at a boardwalk that went out into the swamp. Immediately, I entered a green world of filtered light and muffled tones. The cypress trees with their buttressed roots, and fuzzy green needles looked like a primative plants from an earlier era. You could hear soft splashing off into the brush, but you could not see anything. As I walked further along, the close in brush opened up into a wet savannah of arrowhead plants and reeds.

You get the impression immediately that man does not belong here. We can neither walk through it, paddle through it, or swim through it. It is a foreign landscape that we simply do not belong in.

Later, I turned down several gravel roads to get back into the bayou's. You could only get as far as where the inhabitants parked their cars and switched to the runabout boats that carried them to their homes on the islands that dot the swamp. In the distance, you could see the shrimp boats at their docks along with all their tackle.

Everything was green, and moist, and hushed. It is very different from my suburban life style.

The others in my group went to the casinos last night. I'm pretty sure that I had the better time.