We were walking single file through sword fern and lizard’s tail so dense the three of us could not see where our steps fell. Cottonmouths, languidly sinister, coiled on rotting stumps in sunny patches where sunlight penetrated the dense canopy. I wondered if there was truth to the maxim that snakes don’t bite the first person through.
After seeing snake No. 3, I casually assumed the point position. Even under the thick tree canopy, it was exceedingly hot.
Our water supply was running low, but we weren’t much concerned until it started getting to be late afternoon. We hiked alongside poison ivy vines thick as an adult arm, twisted around giant bald cypress and cottonwoods stretching 50 feet into the canopy. The wind picked up and boxelder trees, weakened from the systematic gnawing of millions of emerald ash borers, creaked in the breeze.
A branch snapped off and crashed into the damp forest floor off to our left; it augered into the ground; stood upright like a crooked fence post. Sensing movement in the undergrowth, we stopped and watched as an armadillo approached a narrow slough. At the water’s edge, it eased into the tannic water and disappeared.
An irregular line of bubbles appeared on the surface showing his (her?) path along the slough’s bottom. After a minute or two, the animal emerged on the far bank and scuttled into the thick undergrowth, its back coated with algae. Though the scene played out for less than a couple of minutes, the diversion was welcome.
We were lost in the Atchafalaya Basin. We, as cheap labor graduate students, had been making the trip from Baton Rouge to the basin weekly since March collecting data for an LSU forest research project. The work was simple enough.
Two, circular half-hectare plots were laid out like bike spokes. Seedlings of nuttall, swamp chestnut, overcup oak, bald cypress, red maple and green ash were spaced along the spokes. Our task was to measure height and diameter of the seedlings and the diameters of the surrounding mature trees which would hopefully provide meaningful data relative to the efficacy of certain bottomland hardwood species for use in artificial forest regeneration.
The data run usually took about four hours. We were done for the day and had set out for the truck. Mary insisted the truck was this way, Mark insisted that it was that way.
I, admittedly, did not know. We finally agreed on a direction and again walked single file for what seemed like miles. Though not entirely panicked (after all we were still in Iberville Parish) we walked for about three hours, mostly in circles until, at dusk, we emerged from the woods onto a shell road.
By sheer happenstance, the truck was about 50 yards down the way. We cranked the air conditioning and fled the basin. About 8 miles east of Whiskey Bay off Interstate 10 is the Ramah bait stand, a ramshackle oasis with low ceilings, rolling hardwood floors and chirping crickets.
Faded Polaroids of monster catfish and stringers of sac-a-lait are thumbtacked to the walls. Ice-cold Mountain Dew never tasted so sweet. The basin, in all its grandeur and indifference, was in our rearview.
If you go, take a GPS. And if you are not alone, walk the point..
