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The Flood
I was elevated on a ridge below sea level walking an area where posted signs warned not to feed the alligators but I saw no such thing to feed, just lots of tiny birds nibbling on Spanish moss. Getting off trail my leg rubbed up against the sign that said not to and I walked the twenty feet over worn marsh grass to dig my fingernails into the soil beneath the raised roots of a two hundred year old live oak tree that had grown from a thousand year old midden of discarded Indian shells. It was a common type shell I took, like that which is used if you have ever seen a shell road but this particular shell may have been handled by a native pre-Louisiana Indian one thousand years ago and I fancy that connection. There are so many things you can do that are wrong that it's hard to choose sometimes.
This was my first trip to the Barataria Preserve in winter, so called winter, I wore a jacket but it was near sixty for a high and the combination of cool air with bright sun and virtually no humans was sweet there is no denying it.
Its almost all hearsay regarding Jean Lafitte the pirate but he roamed this area as its first most famous gangster with a crew of as many as a thousand men and possibly a hundred vessels. He dealt in fine goods and flesh. He brought in slaves, how you gonna love him, but people do. You can't see the harm in it from that little raised mound of trail lined with occasional placards of interest, one in particular paying homage to a pirate who must have had a devil's worth of charm. How much that is wrong do we really distance ourselves from by any more effort than a furrowed brow in a bar over cocktails?
Beautiful fucking day though. I plotted out a strategy that has me living another 86 years just by willing it to be that way. The simplicity of it is the really beautimous part. Maybe at some point it will get more complicated. I mean I may have to start gulping down a tablespoon of vaseline a day as some long-livers advise, but that's cool, I'm up with that. I'm down with that? Well, probably it's better to stay out of synch, it's more consistent. Consistency, Regularity, Discipline and possibly a slew of other boring behaviours are the key to the long life I desire.
In retrospect the grey-headed man with wife and telephoto lens was just trying to be friendly but I had already psyched up to be non-threatening on account of I was sitting alone along the trail like a highwayman, I've read books afterall, and I know everyone is down deep expecting the worst and I just don't want to be that for them. I wasn't prepared for his, "have they all gone?" meaning birds I presume, the day's cacophony suggests that that is what he meant, and my answer of "for now" was not only uppity but suggestive of a knowledge I do not possess. Fuuccck Me. I know they were from Minnesota, the accent was a hint if I were the type to pay attention (which I am not) but the license plate in the parking lot was the dead giveaway. I didn't mean to be that way, friend. I am not all that representative of how friendly we southerners can be. By the way, what is secret of you and your grey-head companion's success? I mean, assuming you don't hate each other every fucking day of your lives. It didn't look that way. Good job man. I'm not going to make it the next 86 years without some help. I wish I knew what you knew. Huh? Oh sure, I can shut up.