Month: January 2018

I have noticed during my travels that there are some places the Catholic church is more present and vibrant than others.  It was this way in New Mexico, where the Catholic missions are infused with First Nations traditions, and it was this way in bayou country, where French Catholicism is blended with Cajun mysticism.  These places seem to revere locations where Mary has walked among us (think Rocamadour or Lourdes), and my final stop of the day would be the local equivalent.

But first, a snack.

It was slim pickings out here at the edge of the earth: a 7-11, a MacDo’s, a sit down fish place, the petrol station quik-e-mart.  I finally stopped at Jo-Bob’s Grill, a combination fast food, convenience store, and bait shop positioned high above the water line on steel pilings*.  A bag of Cajun fries in hand, I retreated to the air conditioning of my car and was soon back on the road.  After a stop in Leeville for a walk along a quieter spot of Bayou LaFourche, I continued north towards Galliano.

The Holy Mary Shrine was built by a local parishioner in the lot adjacent to his home in Golden Meadow.  He was in the habit of stopping in at Our Lady of Prompt Succor to pray, and one day in 1974 he had a vision of Mary during one of his visits.  He describes her as standing where the statues of the Blessed Sacrament had been just moments before, a beauty beyond words, her eyes a deep blue.  After gazing at her for several minutes, he put his head down, thanked God, and when he looked up again she was gone.  He went home and told his wife, and together they built a shrine to honor his vision.  In the beginning it was a simple rendering of Mary carved out of a red cypress tree; today it includes a row of pews cornered with statues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, all sheltered from the sun and rain with an aluminum siding roof and eaves.

I have long had a soft spot for this type of home-grown memorial.  It started with the descansos, home-made crosses or markers that remember traffic (and increasingly motorcycle) fatalities, that sprouted on the side of the road in the ‘90s.  My affection grew during a trip to rural Netherlands in the early 2000s, where many of the fields had a small statue of Mary, Isadore, or another patron saint placed in a corner to watch over the crops.  In Golden Meadow, candles, flowers, and other offerings left at the shrine bore witness to the difficulties of life in the lower bayou.

It had been a long day and I was tired. My plan was to head north the next morning, so once back at the ranch I began loading up for the drive out.  Once finished I curled up and, as I watched the sun set, found myself slowly drifting to sleep.

Note:  A friend graciously shared this link to pictures of Jo-Bob’s:  https://local.yahoo.com/info-190472874-jobob-s-gas-grill-grand-isle?p=jo-bob%20s%20gas%20&%20grill

 

I was back on Route 1.  This stretch of leveed highway parallels the Gulf shore, and a brownish-green marsh stretched between me and open water.  My destination: the end of the road, and possibly pirates.

As I made my way east, wetland slowly gave way to low dunes, and after a flyover bridge I found myself on a barrier island.  Here industry gave way to the tourist economy: the main road was lined with shops and restaurants, while side streets were lined with rental cottages and elevated vacation homes.  Most were elevated on pilings the designers hoped would protect them during future storm surges, providing space to shelter cars, trucks, boats, and the occasional RV from the sun.  It being summer, streets and yards were packed with families and other constellations of revelers enjoying time away from their day-to-day lives.  The balconies of the larger homes sported drying towels and fishing poles.  After some twenty minutes of slow moving traffic the homes thinned again, leaving dunes to my left, a tank farm to my right, and the tip of the island ahead.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the U.S. outlawed trade with both Great Britain and France, two major sources of goods for the recently-acquired New Orleans.  This created opportunities, and a local smuggler and pirate, Jean Lafitte, set up shop on the barrier islands one hundred miles south to fill the need.  For the next few years, merchants made their way across Barataria Bay to his Grand Terre warehouses and slave pens for auctions, and he was mysteriously effective at evading capture by local soldiers and customs officials.  In 1814, as the War of 1812 spread south, Lafitte was approached by the British and asked to join their fleet’s attacks along the Gulf Coast.  Lafitte chose to warn the Americans instead and, after some initial resistance from Jackson, was instrumental in the American victory during the Battle of New Orleans.  When the war was over, his men were pardoned, his Grand Terre station coopted by the government as a coastal defense fort, and Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre moved west to Galveston, where they served as spies for Spain during the Mexican War for Independence.  While Fort Livingston (as their enclave is now known) is accessible only by boat, I’d heard it is possible to get a glimpse of it from the bay’s west side*.

I entered Grand Isle State Park and made my way along the estuary to the visitors center.  The weather here was cooler than in Port Fourchon, with a stiff breeze coming in off the water. There was an observation tower, a roofed deck perched atop five flights of stairs.  I gave it a try but, as expected, abandoned the effort at the fourth turn of the stairs**.  This left the pier that led out over the dunes and the beach and over the water. As I moseyed toward the waves, I watched two families on the beach below, the adults sunning themselves on towels, the youngsters playing near the water’s edge.  To the other side, sandpipers and gulls alternately probed the beach for food and scurried away from the wave wash, and pelicans perched on the stones of a decaying jetty.

And there it was: a stripe of brick on the opposite shore.  Pirates.

I leaned on the railing and took some deep breaths.  It had been a long four months, and fatigue was catching up with me.  My eyes drifted to the waves; the regular rhythm of the swells began to relax the knots in my body and mind.  A shrimp boat chugged through the pass towards open water; a helicopter circled on approach to a nearby base.  A man walked towards me, tackle and pole in hand, set up further down the railing and cast his line.  I scanned the horizon, and the city of oil platforms that stretched along it.  I stood, and breathed in the Gulf air, and slowly began to relax.

* https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/fort-livingston

** Remember the bridge thing?

The road was blocked.

I had stayed on an extra day to catch my breath and re-visit a few favorite places, the first of which was to be the beach where Chewy and I had roamed seven years before.  So after a morning spent sleeping in and reading, I headed south along Louisiana’s Route 1.

One thing about southern Louisiana is that it is slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.  There are many reasons for this, and I won’t go into them here, but it is, and as I drove I could see the effects.  Once past the levee and floodgates (lock)* homes and shops gave way to oilfield contractors and the local fishery** and quickly, open marshland.  The road had been raised and improved, wooden power lines had given way to well-designed catenaries, and a cherished family church (previously clinging to a small rise of earth) was gone.  Just before Leeville, signs directed me to a toll booth and the new bridge, an eight-mile span that rose over the ship route (fortunately to a level I was comfortable with) before paralleling the old Route One to the cut-off for Port Fourchon***.  I paid the three dollar toll and was on my way, my truck’s tires ka-thunking below me.

Port Fourchon is Louisiana’s southernmost port.  It is located at the tip of a thin strip of land between two bays that empty into the Gulf, and is home to businesses that support the offshore oil and gas industry.  At the end of the bridge I continued on past the well-tended homes of Pointe Fourchon and soon approached the port itself.  Several ships rose between the rows of oil tanks: multi-purpose supply vessels, one complete with crane; an oil-spill response vessel; and even a mobile drilling unit.  I continued on, past the Casino and public boat launch, and over the narrow bridge that crossed the last bit of water before the beach.  But there, just past the strip of pavement that led to the Chevron dock, was a gate.  It blocked the road and framed a sign that strongly discouraged continuing past that point.

I had come too far to abandon my quest so close to my destination, so I found a strip of sand, parked my vehicle, and proceeded on foot.  Within a couple of minutes I could see open water and, after the road crested the dunes, the beach.  And when I did, my heart fell.

I had forgotten Deepwater Horizon.

I remember the day of the breach clearly; I had been at my desk in Connecticut when word filtered in that there was a fire on a rig in the Macando Prospect.  When queried, our field service reps advised several of our helicopters were involved in rescues, including evacuations and medical flights.  It was only later, as we watched the attempts to cap the line during the months that followed, that we learned the severity of the event.  Living in the North, I had the luxury of letting it slip from my mind.

The place Chewy and I had hiked was now something like a beach… but not quite.  A concrete and steel-cable fence had been built halfway between the dunes and water, and it was piled high with rocks, gravel and debris.  In the space between, what I remembered as beige sand was now grey slurry, evidence of the spill still evident after all these years.  Just offshore were a series of breakwaters, also new since my last visit, and the water between them and the beach was flat and drab.  As I looked around I realized the fauna had changed as well, less green, more yellow and brown.  I sucked in my breath and the wind buffeted my face and whipped my hair.  The place Chewy had frolicked was gone.

After a few more moments taking it all in I turned and, the wind now out of my sails, hiked back to my truck.

*South LaFourche Levee District: http://slld.org/aboutus.html

**A really interesting fisherman’s collective http://louisianadirectseafood.com/about-us/

***The state of Louisiana some spiffy photos and video from construction here:  http://www8.dotd.la.gov/la1project/news.aspx

Vessels berthed at Port Fourchon: http://www.chouest.com/vessels.html  Video (includes a crane ship): https://vimeo.com/135402632