atchafalayariver
-
Field Notes from Bayou Teche
Somewhere between careful piloting and gentle persuasion, we kept the shantyboat pointed downstream. The Atchafalaya doesn’t take kindly to plans. Humidity climbed, moods sagged, but we held course mostly on charisma and sheer will. After days navigating muddy channels and dense cypress corridors, we pulled out at Butte La Rose with the intention of seeing…
-
George Arnaud has been pushing water—and community—for decades.
We interviewed George, a descendant of Arnaudville’s namesake, who spent over fifty years working the rivers, pushing long rafts of barges up and down the Mississippi and beyond. A career built on current, steel, and river-smarts. When he finally came ashore, George started as a volunteer dishwasher at NUNU Arts & Culture Collective. These days,…
-
An Evening at NUNU in Arnaudville
We had the honor of bringing Dotty to the remarkable NUNU Arts & Culture Collective in Arnaudville earlier this week. The night unfolded in true Louisiana fashion: a community potluck, incredible live music from Maya Kamaty, and an open invitation for folks to climb aboard the shantyboat, share stories, or just hang out. And hang…
-
Big Yella County Fixins in Grand Coteau
Oh man. The food is Louisiana is great, but the flavors that Shantelle whips up are special. I don’t have enough data points to know if this is the difference between Creole and Cajun cooking or just Shantelle’s special style.
-
Lynda Frese is out here making art like the Earth is watching
We sat down with her this week—painter, collage artist, professor emeritus from University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Lynda grew up in Rhode Island, but her work is soaked through with bayou light and Louisiana mysticism. Her collages pull together satellite scans, saucers, sacred forests, and pigment ground from the literal dirt of this place. She…
-
“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 Cats of Krotz (Katz?) Springs
We didn’t see many people in Krotz Springs. But we did see cats. On porches, in tall grass, under trailers. Lounging in the shade or darting behind cars. For every cat we photographed, another vanished the moment we made eye contact—like shadows with whiskers. They weren’t strays. They belonged here. Not to anyone, necessarily, but…
-
A Day in Simmesport
Just after breakfast, we passed a spot where geography and history tangle like roots underwater. This is where the Red River becomes the Atchafalaya—where a meander of the Mississippi once captured the Red, and later, human hands sliced it back open, inserting control structures to keep the rivers separated, but not disconnected. A crossroads of…
-
-
