> Atchafalaya Bayou

I'm driving down a dirt road. Almost to the salt marsh coast in a Jeep on some out-of-bounds construction site. I'm headed for the cypress cemetery south of the fishing village of Theriot. Land of pickled dead trees, killed by increasing salinity as the gulf envelops Louisiana’s southern lands.

Its spooky here; five A.M. and the trees all dead and stuff, and the stiff wind howling down the cold winter-time canal. Most of the shrimpers have taken the winter off and pursued other means of income. The shrimp won’t spawn for another two months, so even the shrimp boats are still and haunted-looking. I walk out and head for the dead forest, and what I find makes no sense to me.

What I find are generators honking away, and steel tubes pumping water and spitting it out elsewhere. I follow one of these tubes, hoping the cutaway through the marsh will gain me access to the wooden cemetery. But no luck. I get as far as the pump's exit hole, which is spitting out a column of water 12 inches in dia

meter. In the distance are towering cypresses, dead for years now.

The next day, I’m in the town of Gibson, northwest of Theriot. It's an island in the sense that the bayous surround it. The bayous surround everything in Southern Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin.

I am knocking on the door of a small house, which is raised three feet in the air and rests comfortably by the bayou.