Six Days in the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp

After an intense week of pre-dawn to post-sunset kayaking and photography, with lots of incredible Cajun food on the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin swamp and the storied Bayou Teche (crawfish etouffee, gumbo, fried catfish, blackened redfish, gator bites, red beans and rice, grillades & grits, lots of bread pudding, and the such), I badly needed a red meat fix tonight.

So after taking a long hot shower, and washing two loads of laundry at the hotel, I headed into New Iberia for a bodacious steak at Preservation (formerly Clementine's). I might live.

But seriously, the week with the master photo group was awesome. The lecture/critique sessions were like drinking water from a fire hose. We paddled in pitch black dark. We shot thousands of images on a wide variety of cameras and lenses. We slept fast on short nights, with any luck.

We followed our fearless leader in ink-black pea-soup fog, glued to his rear-facing head lamp like a night flight of F-4s locked in tight formation on the lead Phantom's lights (but not quite as fast). He was the mother hen, we were his chicks. He got us to exactly the places where we could do the best photography with the best light, and he got us back .. safely. I even felt safe riding in the backseat of his Ford Expedition, and I never feel safe in ANYBODY's backseat!

I was the oldest in the group, by far, but I kept up fairly respectably. The rigors of loading and rigging the kayaks, and paddling miles - BTW: his conversion factor, a constant, is 350 yards = 1 statute mile, or less formally stated "it's just around the next bend" - loosened up my stiff old joints. I dropped a quarter in the laundry room tonight and was actually able to bend over and pick it up, without much pain.

But it is cold here tonight in south Louisiana. And getting colder. So I cancelled my full-moon rising shoot with a guide at Caddo Lake (Texas) next week, and I now plan to head to Amarillo and do the full moon shoot at Cadillac Ranch. Or maybe to Marfa. Depends on the weather. Then swing back through Uncertain, Texas, for some quality time on Caddo Lake.

Life is good. I hope I can do this for years to come.

New Iberia, Louisiana
November 8, 2019


With the legendary CC (Cactus Clyde) Lockwood (R) after kayaking in the Atchafalaya yesterday


Cell phone photo from yesterday morning in the swamp


Early this morning, my last day in the Atchafalaya Basin swamp


I think I might live!