River Music: An Atchafalaya Story

Chapter 10: State of the Basin

c h a P t e r 1 0 State of the Basin O ne week in June, two years later, I left the same cabin at Lake Fausse Point and drove around the basin searching for unsentimental portrayals of the swamps. I needed to do it, I thought, or risk any credibility as an objective observer. I needed to remove my gold-colored glasses. My first stop was the Butte La Rose home of Jim Delahoussaye, who I found relaxing in his wide-windowed living room, facing a thriving garden with noisy, occupied birdhouses and a view of the water. Jim, who had already 152 chapter 10 shared with me knowledge about the “old days” with the Myette Point community, and his family’s deep French and Acadian roots around St. Martinville, poured me a cool glass of tea at his kitchen table and offered to reflect on the basin. When I asked him about its special character, he sat up straight and delivered a brisk assessment of what was, and is. “There was an essence to the basin,” he said. “And it was composed of what it was then. It was the water, it was the open river, the bayous, the fish, the birds, all of that. But it isn’t the same anymore, and you can’t re-create it. That’s why I say I have so little patience for people who want to preserve the basin. That’s fine—that’s well and good. But take it as it is. Don’t require it to be what it used to be. “All of those old things we talk about—the trees, the open water, the flow—all of that—it’s like remembering a person who’s grown old. It’s still that same person, but it’s not the same as it was when it was young, you know? “There are people who are very famous, well-known photographers in the basin, whom I won’t name. And I’m probably the only person who’s ever told those people, face-to-face, that I didn’t like their photographs . Because they just show something pretty. But that isn’t all it was. It was dangerous. It smelled bad. You could die out there. It wasn’t hard to die out there.There was death after death after death that had to do with the character of the environment. And it wasn’t just the natural environment—it was the people, too. If you did the wrong thing, you could get shot—and people did get shot!” I agreed with Jim: you can’t go back to what was. And no one, not even the most entrenched sentimentalist, honestly believes it’s possible, or even desirable at this point, to restore the Atchafalaya Basin to what it used to be. The best anyone can do is support stewardship for what exists now. That’s a tall order, though, because the basin will ultimately fill with sediment, although Jim pointed out that for a while, the gradual filling of lakes and even levee building created excellent shallow-water habitats for hunting and fishing. Sometimes transitions yield unexpected riches. state of the Basin 153 “There’s a train that we all get on when we’re born,” Jim said. “And we sit in our boxcar as the train moves on, and when we die, we step off the train. But when we step off the train, it’s not the same train as it was when we stepped on.” Then why, I asked, would you want to devote your retirement to writing a book about the way things aren’t? Jim’s face softened, and his voice lowered. Because, he replied, the children and grandchildren of the basin people have no idea what their elders were like, and “I want them to understand who they were. “When the people of Myette Point were teaching me what they did so well, there was no way I could pay them back for their patience. But I could write. This is a way of paying them back, for what they did for me, forty years ago.” Paying back, paying forward, leaving a legacy. Noble impulses born of intimacy with someone or something. I wondered, as I took leave of Jim, if such callings will die out with the generations behind us, and the specificities of our lives...