Louisiana green tunnels are like giant lungs. It’s an ebb and a flow that I simply have to let carry me swiftly in bursts of joy-filled fear along the Comite River until I am coughed out onto a white sand river bend beach where I search slowly and peacefully for the Huckleberry Finn within. So much birdsong. There! A giant snapping turtle. And then a pair of alligator gar swimming beneath the sun-reflecting surface and I stop at once. Look around, listen closely. Beginning to know each little sound. The quick burst of the rabbit. The gentle, short slither of the lizards tail. The hop-skip of the birds in the brush. The long, ominous slither of the snake that is almost always a tree root. And goddamn, that armidillo just doesn’t give a shit. He keeps up his relentless search for grubs regardless of any curious blonde apes that come his way.
