Dreaming of Fall

Blue Skies over the Mississippi River

Fall is in the air, yet I hate to speak so soon as I doubt anybody is turning their air conditioners off in the next few days. I see, smell and feel the signs of autumn though.  On Labor Day I took a Mississippi River boating trip, the skies were a deep blue, an indication of fall in difference to the dull whitish blue of our southern summer skies.  You know, hot and hazy.

We saw a bald eagle, might be a resident but a good chance he is coming back for nesting season. Later two big flocks of teal were flying downstream, darting around in their tight formations. Last week at Lake Martin there was a tinge of rusty red in the bald cypress. Maybe it will be a good year for fall colors. That bodes well for me because I am starting a new book on Louisiana landscapes.  Good fall colors will be beautiful, important and photogenic for the project.  Other signs are the French mulberry in bloom, the muscadines dropping their red fruits and the sugar cane taller than a six-foot person. Finally, just a few days ago my hummingbird feeders went from one or two birds to fifteen, this happens every year just before they migrate to South America.

We've got 17 more days before autumn equinox and a lot of hot days left, but I feel it in my bones the change is coming.

Wrong Was the Weather

Camping is one of my favorite hobbies.  It could be deep in the piney woods or on a West Texas Mesa, it really does not matter where, just so I am under the stars and by a campfire.  This time it was on an island in the Mississippi River with sand almost as white as Pensacola Beach.  I took off at noon Saturday with 8 friends in two bateaus; it was cold ride.  We found a place to beach the boats away from the tugboat wakes and set up camp on soft sand.  The weather forecast a few days before said partly cloudy Saturday and with a cold night and a sunny Sunday.  On Saturday morning the forecast had changed to 40% chance of rain today with a 38-degree night.  Who would have guessed they got it wrong, dead wrong.  Luckily we got tents set up before the 100% rain started and continued all night.  They were wrong on the temperature too, for it never got below 50 degrees.  Lucky again, we were wet, but not cold.

Campsite Breakfast.

Not one of our hardy nine complained.  The rain quit at dawn and with Boy Scout level skills we got the fire started to cook eggs, toast and sausage on the grill.  Two bald eagles and a flock of white pelicans brightened the skies. Back to the percentages, 50% is good for me.  I got no stars but a roaring campfire made the trip a joy.

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.