The Bayou, near New Orleans, USA, 11th November 2014.
We contine on in infrared, after somewhat of a diversion into monochrome with the Louisiana Bayou Village post.
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We drift on further into the bayou…
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Another boat load of people…
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This one place I remember from the narration of our guide on the boat. This where in the nineteenth century, a person single handedly cut a channel over a number of years to greatly reduce the time it took him to cart logs out of the bayou.
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The Bayou, near New Orleans, USA, 11th November 2014.
It would be easy to think of the Bayou as a wilderness populated by alligators and escaped convicts, an inscrutable maze in which all who enter become hopelessly lost. This is far from the truth.
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Here are habitations deep inside the bayou. It is a monochrome post because two thirds of the underlying images were infrared and one third regular and I decided to skip colour.
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Houma Indians lived in the bayou, making use of the abundant fishing and wildlife. They were historical allies of the French and many still speak a French dialect as their primary language.
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Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
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From the end of the eighteenth century, people of non-Indian descent began to move into the bayou. French is still the dominant language spoken amongst locals.
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Though fishing and wildlife are plentiful, mosquitos can be too so it is not necessarily a very healthy place to live.
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It also can’t have been a very good place to hide out from Hurricane Katrina and there are many signs of devastation from that time.
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Houses range from the modest …
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… to the somewhat grand
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… and many are rather the worse for wear
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though all retain an undeniable charm.
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A small fishing boat, I presume.
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West Pearl Bridge. The two towers look just like the ones used in mines to raise and lower cages in mine shafts. Maybe that’s exactly what they are. Clearly, though, this is not a bridge like Tower Bridge in London that parts from the middle and raises to the sides; this is a case where the towers raise and lower the whole central section, as controlled by the small room in the middle.
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Notice says: West Pearl Bridge {Phone number} No operator on duty; Require 4 hours advanced notice for bridge openings.
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Boats and houses behind the bridge.
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And finally, a house with aspirations towards becoming a house boat.
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The Bayou, near New Orleans, USA, 11th November 2014.
Somehow it’s fitting to photograph the Bayou in infrared. It’s somewhat surreal in any case.
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The Bayou, near New Orleans, USA, 11th November 2014.
For our last day in New Orleans we organised a Bayou Tour which proved quite delightful. I was fortunate to get a place in the boat with a clear view for taking photographs. Particularly early on, we saw several small alligators.
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If you look carefully (or click on the image to see it larger), you will see that there is a crane sitting in a large nest at the top of this tree.
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Gliding slowly through backwaters of the bayou, which of course is part of the Mississippi delta..
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Another boat coming up a channel…
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My main preconceptions of the Bayou derived from Down by Law, a 1986 film in which Tom Waits and two others escape from prison into the Bayou.
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The Bayou is disappearing, though. It was previously renewed by silt deposited by Mississippi floodwaters. These days, the levees channel most of that water out to the Gulf of Mexico. Consequently, the Gulf is eating away at the Bayou which is losing 65 square kilometres (25 sq. miles) a year. The Bayou is a significant wildlife habitat and fishery and it also helps protect country further inland from hurricanes.
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Murray Foote 