My Very Lucky Lot

Miriam died at 30, but she’s taught me the most important thing about growing old: to be grateful for the experience. Every…

A Day on the Bayou

I knocked on the door a second time, louder. Certainly, someone at this house had to be awake to get this show on the road. I peered into the window, my gas station camoflauge river hat tilting backward against the glass. It was a nice house, for sure, but what kind of Mickey Mouse kayak…

A Hunting Lodge Swimming With Snakes

I could touch the ceilings of the Blind River lodge if I raised my hands over my head. The hunters who used the lodge were duck hunters. The kennels outside are where the dogs were kept. The hunters fed them before dawn, put them in the boats, had the dogs fetch…

Halfway to Holy

We took to the water on a Sunday morning.

Seven students, two tour guides, and a professor kayaking down a bayou — it doesn’t quite have the ring of a joke. Maybe I’m just no good at punchlines. Either way, there we were, sunblocked and sun-warmed on the Blind River, aiming…

Balancing

In the Tygart Valley River, I stood with one foot on either edge of the canoe. The river shoes, already drying in the sun, offered little in way of padding between my feet and the metal rim. My knees bent slightly, and the muscles of my body tightened. My father stood across from me, a foot on either gunwale.

Castles in the Swamp

Can we conquer the swamp? Should we?

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. And that…

A creative nonfiction class from the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop went kayaking on Blind River in southeast Louisiana on a beautiful Sunday in late October 2018. Here are their thoughts on life, conservation and the meaning of it all.