http://livingriver.eu/?p=1565 My campsite by the bayou.
advantageously I stayed that night at St. Bernard State Park, where I paid twenty dollars for the right to camp legally. The very nice woman at the gate, who looked kindly on the idea of biking up the river and seemed eager to please, thought long and hard about which campsite to give me. She had determined that I wanted a quiet spot, and did not need to be too close to the consumerist bonanza of gear that constitutes American car and RV camping, which is typically just a morose mobile barbecue party without the people. She thought about it and chose a site for me, which when I arrived I saw could not have been worse, not only not far from other campers but on wet ground inappropriate for a tent. I chose another spot. In choosing, I decided to put faith in everything I had heard about alligators, that they were peaceable creatures who were not going to harass sleeping cyclists: because if there was ever a site which would tempt an alligator to crawl up out of the water in the middle of the night and grab a sleeping camper by the leg and drag him into the water, this was it. I was just a few feet from the water’s edge, at the end of a bayou, tucked into a little mown strip between box-elders. I figured – and this was accurate in the end – that the greater danger was from the poison ivy coming up through the grass everywhere. I used to be deathly afraid of the stuff; now I just take it as a fact of life outdoors. You get used to the temptation of itching it, and like most temptations, most of the time you resist, and sometimes you don’t.
But it was all worth it, to spend a night in that swamp. The region around New Orleans, in terms of its natural life, is one of the great things I have seen (another trip to a natural place nearby is narrated here). Its distance from the coast removes it from the cooling ocean breezes, so it is truly tropical and humid; and it is removed from the salt of the ocean, which limits the growth of plant life. And it is not merely swamp, or Gulf, or tropical vegetation: no, here the cypress meets the maple, and the cottonwood meets the palm; species that are found a thousand miles to the north are still present here. Many of the animals, too, which are found in New York – the possum and the raccoon and the barred owl – are here, but they are joined by alligators and garfish and large birds I couldn’t even name. I was so surrounded by life I thought Master Yoda might show up, that dream of everyone who seems to have no clear path through life:
I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand
Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?
All through the night I heard that violent rasping of the unfamiliar frogs, and the great booms of the barred owls, their voices bigger and stronger than their northern counterparts, their voices filling the entire swamp. Some strange bird provided a treble cry, while the bullfrogs took up the bass; and all through the night unknown things plopped into the water. To my unknowing ears many of these creatures sounded very large. And then, of course, there were the bugs. My tent sounded like a beehive all night long as they prowled around – in vain, thanks to those tent-manufacturers – smelling the carbon dioxide of my breath. When I shone a flashlight outside I could hardly believe how many there were; mostly mosquitoes, but gnats and Junebugs too, as well as some unfamiliar Mayfly-type creatures. It was hot too; summer was coming. I woke up several times that night, but in between, I slept soundly; I was tired. I was happy and tired.
From my tent-site, a golden-crowned night heron.
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