“The airboat is ready to go,” says Lance Ardoin, but before we step into the cauldron of a South Louisiana August morning, there’s something I need to understand. In his office south of Gueydan, a well-thumbed copy of Aldo Leopold’s…
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” writes Joan Didion in her essay collection…
At the last minute, there’s another pre-departure check of headlamps, a methodical sorting and re-sorting of gear. Inside a barn south of Natchitoches, a dozen hunters adjust their shell bags and wader straps. They pack duck calls, gloves, more and…
Located southwest of Alexandria, the Wild Azalea Trail is a part of the Evangeline Unit of the Calcasieu Ranger District of Kisatchie National Forest. Designated for hiking and cycling, the trail’s start and finish points are…
Each of our journeys contains three parts. First comes the anticipation. For days, months or years, we look forward to our departure. Then, finally, that day arrives. We travel, some of us, to leave…
On the surface, the land along the 3/4th mile Battlefield Trail at Mansfield State Historic Site appears familiar to anyone who has spent time in the Louisiana outdoors. Wind whispers through long needles of loblolly pines, and you turn at…
At Cantrell Studios in Kenner, René Pierre ascends a ladder to put the finishing touches on an 8-foot teapot. Behind him looms a 10-foot chef who grins as he grips a dough roller the width of a great blue…
Picture this. Three thousand years before the arrival of Columbus, you set out from your village in what…
Grand Isle, early August. Bathed in golden light, dozens stand waist-deep in the calm Gulf waters. Spread across the beach behind them march families — children, parents, grandparents. They carry fishing rods, shrimp nets and crab lines. Between calls of…
On game days in Tiger Stadium, Trevor Austin sits beyond the south end zone hoping that fans notice everything but the grass. As LSU Sports Turf Manager, Austin leads a team of 12, half of them full time, the other…
Staff at Adventure Point in Sulphur change the spices in the Louisiana culinary corner once every six months. You smell the exhibit long before you see it. It’s Proustian, an aroma that invokes memories of crawfish boils past. This is…
Found only in Rapides and Grant parishes, the Louisiana pearlshell mussel was listed as federally endangered in 1988. That listing was downlisted to threatened in 1993. In 2010, the Natchitoches hatchery started researching methods to propagate…
Cat Island is home to a 1,500-year-old Champion Bald Cypress, the largest bald cypress specimen in the United States. At 96-feet tall, 17 feet in diameter, and 56 feet in circumference, it’s the largest tree in…
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who stay home and those who don’t. Fall back 2000…
Seated in a rocking chair on South Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, Carrie Fisher ponders her corset. In the past six months, she’s spent 100 hours beading the artwork she’ll eventually attach to it, and with 100 days until…
(Left) This plaque on the grounds of Fort Jackson commemorates Louisiana’s first Mardi Gras. Across the Mississippi River from what later became Fort Jackson, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville camped with his party on March 3, 1699,…
“There are two types of people in Louisiana,” says Shane Kessler. “Those that have a hog problem, and those that are about to have a hog problem.” Outside of Grand Ecore, Kessler turns onto the Campti Cutoff and glides along…
Wafer Creek, the landmark for which the ranch was named, runs through an intact bottomland forest. For more than a century, it has been left mostly uncut, meaning that Wafer Creek Ranch thrives in its natural…
At a Glance Location Iberia Parish Flora Rip Van Winkle Gardens consists of approximately 15 acres of semi-tropical gardens that include irises, magnolias, camellias, azaleas, hibiscus, and…
At A Glance Location Evangeline Parish Environment Bottomland hardwood forests grow in low-lying areas that surround lakes and rivers. Hickories, oaks and plants provide food for wildlife in these forests that store water, filter pollutants and act as a…
On LA Highway 46 in Violet, headed south to the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana headquarters, a student seated at the back of the bus poses a question: “Is restoration important?” It’s simple but not simplistic, a reminder that…
Location Pointe Coupée Parish Parish seat New Roads From Easter until sugarcane harvest, the 19th-century bell in front of the Alma General Store in Lakeland rings twice each day. The first bell, at 7 a.m., signals the start…
At a Glance Location Acadia Parish Flora Grooved flax, small palafoxia, shining indigo-bush Fauna Sabine map turtle, southern crawfish frog, Teche painted crawfish Three masked men climb atop a barn and pound their fists against its rusted roof. Below,…
At a Glance Location Union Parish Flora Pondberry, Ozark Chinquapin, American alumroot Fauna White-breasted nuthatch, summer tanager, prothonotary warbler The home Amy and Kelby Ouchley built in Rocky Branch, 14 miles north of West Monroe, contains no…
Beneath the tall loblolly pines near the Ouiska Chitto Creek in Allen Parish, two dogs hunt to the tune of electronic birdsong. Their orange tracking collars chirp in intervals, first from one dog, then from another, until, briefly, the birdsong…
In March 2022, three months into her role as caretaker of Briarwood Nature Preserve in Saline, Bayli Quick turned off Louisiana Hwy 9 to find the tall pines along Caroline Dormon Road ablaze. Rather than turn back, Quick drove…
Did You Know? Facts and Figures • There are 154 national forests in the United States, and the U.S. Forest Service manages 193 million acres. • The Calcasieu Ranger District, which includes two non-adjacent “Units” — Vernon and Evangeline…
Stepping from The Enterprise (“It boldly goes where no boat should go”), Bryan Piazza and Joseph Baustian enter the dry bed of a nameless bayou. It’s winter in the Atchafalaya Basin, a season of low water and expectation. In…
AT A GLANCE Location Tangipahoa Parish Flora Birdbill spike grass, scarlet oak, little floating heart Fauna+Insects Southeastern blue sucker, Hodges’ clubtail,…
At a Glance Location Bienville Parish Flora American pinesap, black-fruited spike sedge,…
Along the Antill Canal in Terrebonne Parish, 10 miles southeast of Gibson, we drift for 15 minutes before the first sighting. “There,” says Rod Bonvillain Jr., a construction foreman from Houma. He moves toward the bow, finger pointing to…
Twenty miles south of Natchitoches, the future — and past — threatens to slide…
On either side of the boat stretches the vast wetlands of south Louisiana. Farther south, several miles beyond this ruler-flat landscape, lie Vermilion and West Cote Blanche bays — and beyond,…
Did you know? Facts and Figures…
Clarence Coco and Paul Daigrepont, hoop net fishermen from Bordelonville, work on the Mississippi River at Pointe Coupee Parish.
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