Photo by Frank McMains

September 2011. Beyond the Loblolly Pines: As you streak by on the interstate, a water wonderland lies just out of view.

As a citizen of Baton Rouge, you could be forgiven for not realizing the beauty of Livingston Parish. Unless your high school sports team traveled to play Denham Springs High then it is possible that your only experiences with Livingston Parish are watching a stretch of piney woods fly by as you travel Interstate 12 towards Florida or some other point east. From the main road it looks like a lot of other parts of Louisiana. But Interstate 12 just grazes the northern boundary of the parish. Off of those main roads, Livingston is as diverse and beautiful as any part of Louisiana.

The parish is even shaped a little bit like our state, sweeping southeast towards the gulf. Sandy, red-clay soil and quiet little towns define the northern portions of Livingston, while, the southern part of the parish is a familiar, Louisianan, watery paradise. Nearly half of Livingston Parish is water, encompassing a significant portion of Lake Maurepas and many of the swamps, bayous and cypress stands that surround that little brother of the Pontchartrain.

The casual traveler sees a residential, sleepy Livingston. Those more familiar with the slow curling of Blind River or the raucous parties on Maurepas’ sandbars know better. Eric Edwards, the ebullient head of the Livingston Parish Convention and Visitors Bureau, took me on a waterborne tour of Livingston Parish where all you need to appreciate its natural beauty is a full ice chest and a full bottle of sunscreen. From what I could tell, a fishing pole and some water skis might come in handy too.

Leaving the still water of the dock by Eric’s house, our pontoon boat edged out into one of the many tributaries that eventually flow into Blind River and then into Maurepas. Named for an eighteenth-century French nobleman, the Comte de Maurepas, this large inland lake collects north of the Pontchartrain and shares some of its tidal, brackish characteristics. Salt water is pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico into the Pontchartrain where some of it passes into Maurepas. In turn, four rivers (the Tickfaw, Amite, Natalbany and Blind) dump fresh water into the shallow basin.

No matter how many times it is demonstrated to me, it is easy to lose sight of how vitally interconnected the great forces of tides and rivers are, even in a place as far from the open Gulf as Livingston Parish. The same ecosystem that is typically associated with the Atchafalaya is present around Lake Maurepas. The great cypress forests that stood for centuries before they were logged in the early 1900s were nurtured here too. Their passing is just as evident in the form of gigantic stumps rising from the waterline and the occasional piece of discarded logging equipment.

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