“Patriarchs in Stately Rows”

“The trees along the stream’s course are seen first and remembered longest. The live oak makes here its greatest stand in Louisiana: patriarchs in stately rows, long files for several miles; double avenues, with branches arching high above the heads of passers-by, leaves mingling with leaves; clumps at the banks, hanging over the water. At the bayou bank rise Palmettoes and canes, their sharp spikes unaffected by the breezes that lift the moss edges. Against them drift the ever-Present water hyacinths on their way to the Gulf. Along the easy slope of the soil to both sides spread white fences to mark the property lines, and barns and other outbuildings also adjust themselves here and there to the line of the ground.

“Thick hedges of roses, orange trees, magnolias, vines, and small wild flowers give proof of the fecund base. But the oaks are the mark of the Teche. Some are fantastically twisted giants, thirty feet or more in girth, of a heavy fiber that seems impenetrable. The arms often stretch out practically at right angles from the trunk, 150 feet or so, and from each hangs the moss that is sometimes a yard or so longer, trailing to the grass or to the water. Among the trees and the flowered growths sing the cardinals and the mockingbirds.”

‘From The Bayous of Louisiana by Harnett T. Kane

Thanks to Connie Castille for the evening reading.