As we came up'on the outskirts of St. Martinville on a worn pea gravel country road, Jason toll'd us ta "keep a keen eye for a blue truck wit a gray sign." A country mile later thar stood the truck, fitted with the as-advertized "Swamp Tours" sign.
Our boat cap'n and guide was an supremely knowledgeable fellow named Butch. A Southern man, Butch had only nice things to say about northern Wisconsin where he lived for a couple years in the '90s. He said he'd seen nough snow to last him a lifetime however, and now has a baowl taking people 'round his favorite stomp'n grounds on Lake Martin in a 24-foot Louisiana crawfish skiff.
Thar wasn't a queshun 'bout the swamp Butch wasn't fit to answer, and I doubt we missed a single swamp creature due to his sharp eye. We tallied damn nea 20 aligators (from babies to 10 feet long), dozens of fowl (including giant blue heron, white egrets, several cormorant vryties, arsynth), turtles, snakes, and bugs. The noon-day sun shown through the groves of cypress trees and most cold-blooded an'mals was taking the opp'tunity to sunbathe while the get'en was good.
We learned about just about every plant and animal we saw, heard about the 20,000 pairs of mating birds that 'rive in the spring, got a look at some stately duck blinds constructed in the water (which are deeded as private property on a public lake), and got a lesson on the difference between a swamp and a bayou (genrly, bayou being the deeper channel that transports flood waters, and the swamp being the outlying area that floods).
In a couple hours we circumscribed the full lake and were astonished at the intimacy we got sitting right on the water, and depth of information Butch shared about his ecosystem. If you find yourself near St. Marysville and would enjoy a nice spring day on water, head on out and see Butch at the best dang'd swamp tour around.
No more accents, please.
ReplyDelete