High Water in the Atchafalaya

It’s a hot day with big beautiful cumulus clouds.  Very humid, the water is brown but not heavily silted as I start in the Classic Bayou Canal, a place I have paddled and motored 300 times.  It is 12 plus feet deep; I have seen it dry.   Sycamore, persimmon, willow and pepper vine close it into a tight jungle of vegetation, so different than the 70s.   The birds are varied and full of song.  At one point I smell a rotting animal.  I am sure some have drowned.  On I idle slowly, a blue dragonfly lands on my bare foot.   I stop listen and think of all the days like this, peaceful – and very quiet in its own way and alone. 

The wind is cooling; the deep green of the tree tops sway slightly. As I see a beaver resting on a floating bald cypress log, I know the terrestrial wildlife that did not move out in time is having a hard life. The birds and aquatic life on the other hand dance with joy. A beaver is an aquatic creature, swimming and building dams, but when the water goes over its den too quickly for him to rebuild higher…life is different.  I move closer and get good shots and see this dazed look on its face. He is confused with no dark hole to crawl into during the daylight hours.

A little later I come on to a patch of land 21 feet by 15 feet and see the backs of two armadillos protruding from the dirt.  I stop and photograph them while four more come crawling out of a hole that is not much more than a depression.  The water table is about 10 inches down, so they cannot dig proper holes.  Lucky for them the insects are kind of trapped here too.  Food!

After dark, I was just falling asleep on a friend’s small houseboat.  It was a fairly primitive craft, but was mosquito proof.  I heard a human-like voice and something bumped the boat.  I leaped out of bed and after getting no reply to “Whose there!” I shine my light out into Bloody Bayou and see something that looked kind of white and swimming.  It came toward me and the white was actually tan.  It was a White-tailed Deer, a doe and she was swimming like an Olympic athlete.  She came right up to the boat.  Looked like she wanted to climb aboard, but the deck was too high.  I thought for a minute that she might want me to lift her up on deck, but I knew that would turn into a real mess.

I first met the Atchafalaya in the high water years of 1973-75.  It was fun remembering those great days when I could paddle about everywhere and today I could again.  The water is already dropping.  The system is getting a good flushing of fresh water.  The terrestrial animals will bounce back and the Basin remains as my favorite place in the whole world and a gem in Louisiana’s portfolio.

A Full Mississippi River and the Morganza Spillway

Yesterday I took a helicopter flight over the Morganza Floodway and saw the Mississippi full to the high banks in West Feliciana Parish and across it was near the levee top on the East side in Pointe Coupee Parish.  Big, scary water, yet not enough to open too many of the gates at Morganza. 

The Mississippi River being relieved of some pressure
by means of the Morganza Spillway 

 In the picture you can see agricultural lands in the background.  That reminds me of 1970s when we were battling to stop the Corps of Engineers channelization project on the Atchafalaya River.  That project would have drained much of the Atchafalaya Swamp during normal water levels and that would have dropped the guard of landowners to do more development within the floodway.  Then when a Mississippi River flood needed the relief of the spillway, it too would be developed.

Happily most of the Atchafalaya Basin below Highway 190 is still wet and wild. And hopefully the backwater flooding will not harm too many homes.

Giant waves rushing out of the Old River Control Structure
are over 30 feet tall.

Last Thursday I drove over the Old River Control Structure and photographed the giant standing wave.  The hydraulics of all that water coming through the structure made a colossal 30-foot tall wave that makes the rapids in the Grand Canyon look miniature.  Good for crawfish and bad for raccoons and deer, the Atchafalaya is getting a good flushing.  I am dreaming about all the exotic plants being flushed out to never return, that's pie in the sky, but what the heck, let's dream.