A Poetic Place: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Evangeline” and St. Martinville
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” writes Joan Didion in her essay collection…
Author: Kevin Rabalais
Duck Hunting in Louisiana
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…
Looking for the Wild Azalea Trail
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…
Meandering Through Opelousas’ Spiritual Trail
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…
Exploring Mansfield State Historic Site
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…
The Talented Artists Who Create the Fanciful Floats of the Carnival Season
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…
Preserving Poverty Point
Picture this. Three thousand years before the arrival of Columbus, you set out from your village in what…
Grand Isle: From Chopin’s Day to Today
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…
Death Valley Field Prep for the LSU Tigers
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…
Exploring the Creole Nature Trail
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…
Hatching a Way Forward The Work of the Natchitoches National Fish Hatchery
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 National Wildlife Refuge
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…
The Earthen Mounds of Marksville
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who stay home and those who don’t. Fall back 2000…
Dames de Perlage
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…
Holding Down the Fort
(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,…
Hog Wild
“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…
Bringing an Ecosystem Back
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…
Seismic Rescue
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…
Protected Land
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…
Shell Game
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…
Raising Cane
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…
A World Inside Out
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,…
Knowledge of Place
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…
On The Hunt
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…
Preferred Natives
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…
The Greatest Good
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…
Atchafalaya Basin
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…
Strawberry Fields
AT A GLANCE Location Tangipahoa Parish Flora Birdbill spike grass, scarlet oak, little floating heart Fauna+Insects Southeastern blue sucker, Hodges’ clubtail,…
Shared Inheritances
At a Glance Location Bienville Parish Flora American pinesap, black-fruited spike sedge,…
Gator HUNT
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…
Cultural Preservation
Twenty miles south of Natchitoches, the future — and past — threatens to slide…
Natural State: Preserving and Protecting
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,…
Natural State: Spring Renewal
Did you know? Facts and Figures…
Gone Fishin’
Clarence Coco and Paul Daigrepont, hoop net fishermen from Bordelonville, work on the Mississippi River at Pointe Coupee Parish.
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