Over the vast sweep of geological time, the Mississippi River has danced across the state of Louisiana like the flicking tail of an anxious cat. It has carved out new paths to the sea, jumped channels to leave behind dawdling bayous and scoured the Earth’s mantle to build up islands at its mouth. For those inclined to life’s leisurely pursuits, the river’s greatest creation may be the many oxbow lakes that flank its watery route.
Oxbows get their name from their dramatic, crescent shaped appearance that some observers believed to resemble the wooden bracket that passed under a draft-animal’s neck and attached to the yoke. When the path of the Mississippi executed a gradual change, these lakes would silt in over time, becoming a literal backwater. On other occasions, when the might of the river cut a new channel to the sea in sudden fashion, then the oxbow would retain much of the depth and character of its mother river. Such oxbows remained broad and deep, while their slowly formed cousins ended up as little more than long, lilypad-swollen ponds.
The denizens of the lower-Mississippi delta around Baton Rouge are well acquainted with False River, a seemingly purpose made recreational lake. Many oxbows bear names that reveal their former lives such as False River, Blind River, Old River—all of these names noting the Mississippi’s habit of capriciously remaking its landscape. False River has long been a weekend retreat during the steamy summer months when cane-pole fishing and water skiing seemed to offer some respite from the heat. Over the years, its proximity to Baton Rouge has been both a blessing and a mild curse. It is ideal for a quick getaway, but False River has also become undeniably crowded.
As one moves north up the Mississippi and further away from population centers, there are no fewer oxbows but they are less intensely used. Lake Saint John across the river from Natchez attracts plenty of party barges and knee-boarders. But, a weekend there looks less like a flotilla is preparing for the Normandy invasion than some rivers and lakes further south.
Far north, in East Carroll Parish, sits Lake Providence. It is another graceful oxbow, and it has an eponymous town, offering a few city-type amenities and crowning its cypress heavy banks.
For those seeking a real getaway, a true place of beauty and seclusion, there is Lake Bruin in Tensas Parish. It is south of Tallulah and north of Vidalia; put another way, it isn’t close to anywhere.
I should disclose my bias for Lake Bruin. My mother was born very near there, in the one-stoplight town of Newellton, and we have spent many summers lolling about in its cool, brown water. It is where I first learned to fish, where I saw my first shooting star, and probably where I first came to love the rural solitude of Louisiana’s agricultural parishes.
Lake Bruin is deep. There are spots in the turn where the bottom is over a hundred feet below. These minor abysses keep the lake a little cooler in summer and are reputed to contain a few of the freshwater monsters of the river. Old black and white photographs show proud men in high-wasted pants standing over American sturgeon or paddlefish that limply fill the length of a pickup truck’s bed. Big fish like that are no longer pulled from the depths, but something of the exotic and unknown remains.
Swimming or canoeing across the nearly mile wide lake reminds you just how much like the river this oxbow is, but where the Mississippi is turbulent, Bruin is calm. Most mornings or evenings, when the wind is still and the tawny cypress rest ancient and shaggy, the lake is as smooth as a plane of glass reflecting back the wild purple-orange of the sun at the horizon.
A friend from New York spent a few days on Lake Bruin in late April. He commented, with the grudging respect of urban dwellers who have been won over by nature’s beauty, that he had never been somewhere so quiet or so dark. And it is very dark. Lake Bruin makes for an ideal spot to watch the two great annual meteor showers in North America— August’s Perseids and Decembers Geminids. Only once you have gotten far from the city lights can you appreciate the umber to snowy slash of the Milky Way or the lingering, horizon-spanning incandescence of a night filled with falling stars.
Even on the Fourth of July, a date likely to draw people to idyllic vacation spots, the lake was peaceful. The area west of the annual fireworks display did fill with boats as dusk came on, but for most of the holiday weekend a wake would only break across the lazy swimmer every five minutes or so. That passes for heavy traffic on Lake Bruin. Any other weekend you can go thirty minutes without seeing a skier or fisherman. The lake’s remoteness is a significant part of its charm. However, a visitor to this languid emerald of Tensas Parish would be wise to wrap up their affairs before eight in the evening. By then, a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread is almost forty-five minutes away. The few shops and gas stations between Saint Joseph, Newellton and Waterproof turn off their lights early.
It is hard to describe a place that you love without gushing. It is even more difficult to do justice to a place that is crowned by its silence and made beautiful by its measureless furrows of soybeans and cotton. Lake Bruin is almost a metaphor for that part of vacant, always transforming Louisiana. You can see the darkened Masonic Lodges that used to host dances and the shuttered main streets where there once were banks and cafes. And you can see the long, curling lake that used to be the river. The purpose has not gone out of those places; they have just changed as the Mississippi always has. The lumber mill and ferry are closed, but the lake is now ringed with fine homes where once there was just the occasional, moss green camp.
As the sun hammers down on another Louisiana summer and the temperatures again become unbearable in the city, we will be drawn to places like Lake Bruin. Fish, swim, ski or simply look at the stars through the silent, humid night. These are the reasons why people have always longed to escape to broad, placid lakes. The economies of man or the gravity of the river may redraw those places, but the quiet mystery and wide-open beauty will remain.
Details. Details. Details. Information on rentals on Lake Bruin can be found at: www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/louisiana/lake-bruin www.lakebruinrentals.com www.janenetterville.com
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