December 22, 2009
“The Mississippi River is just killing me,” said Nathan regarding his decision to leave the Mississippi River and sail south instead on the Atchafalaya River deep in Louisiana Cajun country. “The barge traffic is just intense and they’re always in my way. I’m in a small boat and I need small water. The Mississippi is not so big and scary and gnarly any more, but today sixteen barges went by and I had to wait on them.” Also, south of Baton Rouge, the Mississippi river traffic includes ocean going container ships.
Nathan intends to eventually end up in New Iberia, Louisiana, and tie up for awhile at the dock of the dad of a friend, Ragan. Looking at the map I have no idea how he’ll eventually end up in New Iberia from near Southern Mississippi where he is camping tonight. Earlier this week he had me on Google Maps to find the canal route from Baton Rouge to Morgan City, Louisiana, and I got lost! Tough to trace the route on the map: rivers and channels and bayous and lakes and I was glad that I really wasn’t in a boat trying to find my way. I communicated by e-mail with Ragan telling her of my problem in helping Nathan navigate; she said a friend of her dad’s is a local Cajun and he could tell Nathan how to find his way through the area.
While traveling the Atchafalaya River, Nathan said on his west bank will be St. Landry Parish (parishes, of course, are the counties of Louisiana). It’s named for a seventh century bishop of Paris and there are a lot of people named Landry in Louisiana. Although they’re of a different family line, they, like we, are descended from the Acadians, the French settlers of Nova Scotia, forcibly deported by the British in 1755. Some Acadians came to Louisiana (“Cajun” is a corruption of “Acadian”), others remained in (or in the case of our family, escaped back to) Quebec. Last summer Nathan met some of his Acadian relatives in Quebec when he hitchhiked to our family reunion on the Gaspe Peninsula.
The water on the southern Mississippi River is foul, Nathan said. “I haven’t seen a jumping fish break the surface in a hundred miles. Even the dog won’t drink it.”
Tonight he is camping on the river with some locals he met. I’m not sure if they’re on the banks of the Mississippi or if they’re by the Atchafalaya.
There is a lot of Mississippi River barge traffic and the water is bad, “But,” Nathan said, “I’m having a good time.”
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This is pretty awesome. My maw-maw is from New Iberia and the whole clan lives in Westlake. Nathan might go pretty near it! We recently traced our family tree from France, to Canada, then to a refugee colony in France, then to Lousiana. The Cajuns had a long hard road from Canada to Lousiana!
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