All photos by Frank McMains
Right or wrong, I have always felt I could trust a person carrying a fishing pole. These two brothers were coming back from fishing on the far side of the levee near Buras when I stopped and asked them for directions. There isn’t much in lower Plaquemines Parish, but that just makes it easier to get lost. Fishermen are the public affairs officers of Louisiana back roads. If you’re out to enjoy the fishing yourself or on the way to another pleasant distraction, fishermen can give you a tip on a good place to eat in a sleepy parish, advise how to avoid the local speed trap, or tell you where to buy bait. Their primary fault lies in that they are unlikely to provide you with helpful information about fishing.
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We all have places that we adore—places we keep going back to or wish that we could. Maybe they aren’t even places but a combination of memories, a time rather than a place. Lake Bruin in Tensas Parish is that place for me. It is the place that most informs my inner Louisiana. In the snow-globe of my imagining, the cypress trees and endless cotton rows are the archetype of the state I love, the model Louisiana by which all other Louisiana’s are judged. There is so much to treasure in this state. Our quotidian worries can blind us to that; but boil a sack of crabs bought on Bayou Lafourche, be lied to by a fisherman, spend the day on the water as clouds as high as mountains float overhead, and it will come right back to you. There is much to be appreciated here; go places that make you happy.
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Surfing and beaches are not activities that Louisiana is known for. Happily, we have plenty of people who are unbound by notions as limiting as the practical. Grand Isle, where this was taken, is one of my favorite places in Louisiana for a lot of reasons. One of them is because it is so implausible. It is an eyelash of land, dangling in the Gulf of Mexico, peopled by the descendants of pirates. Grand Isle has taken everything that storms, disease, and the British Navy have dished out, and it has thrived. The green, hot wilds of Louisiana await whatever fanciful means of accessing them you can devise. Why not surf there? Why not dream crazy dreams on our last island?
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Seasons in Louisiana are marked by many things, the variety of crustaceans or mollusks available to cook and eat high among them. There’s eating local and then there’s buying shrimp from the shrimper’s kids across the street from the family shrimp boat at anchor. Getting out in the summer and exploring this place of ours is rewarding for all sorts of reasons, but many a summer meal was made more memorable by a pie made with peaches bought along the side of the road or corn from a stand on some highway corner. We have good reason to be enthusiastic about our food in Louisiana, a June-heat ripened Creole tomato is your birthright. Claim it.
