Lighter moments

from the journal:

Tonight we had a good old fashioned crab boil to end the night. A resident named John Booth, who has fast become a welcomed addition to our kitchen, brought us 50 pounds of soft shell blue crab that he and a couple of other residents caught in the waterways that surround the parish. John Booth and his crabbing friends were among the population of retirees before the storm hit. They’ve got a spirit in them that’s unbelievable.

Tonight they were in the back with us, talking and laughing along with us. Even after what they’ve been through and what they are still going through, they make time to take care of their volunteers. Their volunteers, they tell us. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

They were having a great time picking at the live crabs and letting us in on the finer points of cracking open crabs. The food was fantastic and the night was quiet.

John Booth reflected that nature has a way of getting people’s attention in cruel ways. But sometimes that’s the only way of getting people’s attention. He looked out toward the sunset and said the great cypress swamps and the bayous were dying. They were starved for fresh water and salt water was encroaching from the Gulf. That made the cypress trees die and the bayous were turning brackish and choking with sea grasses. As the marshes break down and fall apart, they provide little protection against strong storms. When a strong storm passes over these areas, the sea grass offers little resistance to the winds and the storm surges, where the healthy marshes and cypress swamps slow them down and bottle up the storm surges.

He and others have been arguing this point with the Army Corps of Engineers for years. They’re engineering the bayous and cypress swamps into extinction and placing the population in peril. Now they are listening. Perhaps something good will come of Katrina in the long run, he said. Perhaps. He’s more hopeful now than he has been in years. He sees the willingness to listen and change. Talks are already in progress over the ways to inject fresh water from the Mississippi into the bayous. Revitalizing the bayous probably won’t happen in my lifetime, he said, but I want to see it started before I die.

Look at it out there, he said. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The sun was setting and the sky was red on the horizon.

I told him about a New England saying—Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. John Booth laughed his deep booming laugh and said that was good wisdom for a Yankee.

Turns out the red sky rule applies even down on the Bayou.