Gwen Roland - Atchafalaya houseboat : my years in the Louisiana swamp

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Atchafalaya Houseboat

GWEN ROLAND

Atchafalaya Houseboat

MY YEARS IN THE LOUISIANA SWAMP

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY C. C. LOCKWOOD

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE

Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright 2006 by Louisiana State University Press
Photographs 2006 by C. C. Lockwood
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Sixth printing

Designer: Laura Roubique Gleason
Typeface: Whitman
Printer and binder: Maple Presss

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roland, Gwen, 1948
Atchafalaya houseboat : my years in the Louisiana swamp / Gwen Roland ; with photographs by C. C. Lockwood.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8071-3089-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8071-3089-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Atchafalaya River Region (La.)Social life and customs. 2. Atchafalaya River Region (La.)Description and travel. 3. Roland, Gwen, 1948 4. Atchafalaya River Region (La.)Biography. 5. SwampsLouisianaAtchafalaya River Region. 6. HouseboatsLouisianaAtchafalaya River Region. 7. Boat livingLouisianaAtchafalaya River Region. 8. River lifeLouisianaAtchafalaya River Region. I. Title.
F377.A78R65 2006
976.3'42dc22

2005022535

Much of this book was originally published in the 1970s as part of a series called Swamp Gas in Gris Gris. Earlier versions of two chapters have appeared in the Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate: Two Dozen Flapjacks and a Swampers Tale (December 17, 1978) and Mark Twain, Mike Fink, and Me (March 23, 1980).

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

In memory of Alcide Verret, Richard Bunch,
and Josephine Ashley Voisin

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge some of the special people who contributed to this record of a brief, beautiful life.

Foremost my gratitude goes to Calvin Voisin for the great adventure. A merrier companion there never was.

I appreciate C. C. Lockwood, who has committed his life to the preservation of the Atchafalaya and other wilderness places, for making time to join me in this project.

This book surely couldnt have been written without Terry Loup, who saved me from drowning before any of us ever thought there would be anything to write about. My friend before, during, and after the swamp, thank you for cracking open the door to my past. Sandy Romero has listened to my stories since we were children and keeps asking for more. Columnist Ed Cullen encouraged me to write a book and, when I balked, contacted LSU Press himself. Editor Mike Steinberg pushed for more than I intended to tell and made a better story. Wilbur Odom and Valerie Berton read drafts and suggested valuable changes to the finished text. Mary Lee Eggart preserved our flicker of swamp gas as official dots on a page of history.

My husband, Preston, made the leaving worth it.

Atchafalaya Houseboat

Prologue

The light is what I recognize first. Probably October, according to the low-riding angle of sunshine.

Then my own face looking back at me from twenty-five years ago. Wearing nothing but a sheet. A man I didnt marry is holding my hand in a proprietary way. My long-dead dog sleeps at my feet.

Im writing an article for farmers about pastured poultry when the picture appears on my computer screen, dragging a vanished life along with it. Calvin Voisin, my whippet Lemon Peel, and I had been caught on film very early in the morning looking as if we would all live foreveryoung and strongin a world we built ourselves.

According to the e-mailed photo caption, this image by C. C. Lockwood had been published in 2003 by the National Geographic Society in a volume called the 100 Best Pictures Unpublished. Ive never seen it before, one of hundreds, maybe thousands, C.C. had snapped in the 1970s during his visits to our home in Louisianas Atchafalaya River Basin Swamp.

I turn away from such an intimate moment. I dont know those people, that place. This is voyeurism. Shifting slightly I look out the window to the familiar sight of my hens scratching in the shade of the woodlot, hiding from Georgias summer sun. But right now even their contented clucking seems to come from times past. The picture continues to flicker in the corner of my eye. I force myself to examine it from corner to corner, making it all come back.

Time backpedals while I study the impersonal trappings firstcheesecloth mosquito netting draped over a bed made from cypress boards taken from a slave house. Its all suspended on nylon ropes ordered from a fishermans supply catalog. The other viewers wouldnt know that. That inside knowledge gives me permission a few minutes later to examine the hot pink welding burns inside her left arm, my left arm. After a quarter century, they are white scars that never tan.

Lemons dome-shaped head. I remember how perfectly it fit my cupped palm like Maggies broad Labrador skull does now. Such different dogs, the same hand. I reach down to scratch Maggies ears, and let out the breath Ive been holding.

Still, its a long time before I can look at our twenty-something faces.

Well, my eyes havent changed, and my long hair still looks the same. OK, OK, except that silver streaks from my temples these days when I pull it up in a french braid. Its an effect I like. Thats a long time to be wearing the same non-hairstyle. Maybe its time to consider a change.

Moving on to the smooth, tanned skin, I want to warn her about sun damage. I know other people did, but if she, I, could see our face today, maybe she would have listened.

This is turning into fun. Was I ever that skinny? Why did she think I was fat back then? Today, wearing about twenty more pounds, Im much happier in my body than she ever was. She wouldnt believe me if I could tell her. As with the sunscreen, shell just have to find out for herself.

And then theres Calvin, angel hair not yet tamed into a ponytail for the days work. Calm blue eyes taking in everything without judgment or surprise. He never fidgets, and its apparent even in a still photograph. Powerful shoulders make him appear heavier than his 135 pounds. Even though the picture doesnt show them, I know that thick veins cord his forearms from years of paddling boats and pulling on hoop nets.

As the shock wears off and my feet begin to settle in both time zones, what strikes me most is how permanent we look in the bed and house we had built with our own hands. In reality we were there less than a decade, as ephemeral as the glowing image on my monitor. Like swamp gas.

C. C. Lockwoods photos of the Basin launched his career and introduced us to millions of people. A passionate nature photographer, he was also a businessman who knew that a few people pictures scattered among the images of owls and alligators help sell an exhibit or a story. He dutifully practiced that part of his art on our daily life, working out for himself the elements of good human-interest photography. As it turned out, the same skills and patience that helped him capture other animals in their natural habitat worked with us as well. He usually spent at least a few days every month with us, and it wasnt long before we stopped seeing the camera. Like an eye patch or the brim of a hat, it was just another part of him. The result was a sort of early reality series in still photography, a vast collection documenting our most mundane activities such as milking a cow, gathering eggs while wading in hip boots, washing our hair in a dishpan on the front of the barge, or waking up on an autumn morning.

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