Baton Rogue Landscape

My wife and I just returned from a brief trip to visit family in Baton Rogue, Louisiana where I had my first up-close experience with the Cajun south, the swamplands and bayous that make up the low-lying Mississippi basin. Its easy to under-appreciate the rampant life that this land breeds. From insects to alligators to ancient oaks to strangling vines the whole region explodes with growing things; its probably most accurate to think of the area as a less temperate jungle. one that occasionally almost freezes in the winter.  Its easy to see why agriculture took root down here.

The Mississippi river enables all of this growth and the seasonal floods that we have mostly contained with levies still drive the ecology of the area.  The water table is always just below the surface; I have no idea how they build houses, bridges, and skyscrapers with soil that is always so saturated with water.  The water is always in the air, as well.  The humidity allows the famous Spanish moss to grow of the oak trees and caused me to sweat whenever outside, even when the temperature was not very high.

Our more structured human life is also enabled by the River.  the Mississippi is famous for the commerce it enabled and the area plantations all took advantage of it from the beginning.  We still use it today, but for more sophisticated goods like oil.  North of Baton Rogue is a large oil refinery complex that receives tankers coming in from the Gulf; I don't know if the refined product is similarly transported out the way it came in but it easily could be.

The most exotic creature I experienced was the famous alligator, living in a wildlife refuge we explored.  Most of the time all we saw of them were the famous pair of eyes, watching us watching them.  We were also luck enough to catch sight of one fully out of the water, hiding in the shade of a tree.  None of these animals were very large (by Hollywood standards) but all seemed more than capable of defending themselves from pesky photographers like me.

That same refuge had a bird sanctuary; large platforms several feet above the surface of the water to provide a place for the birds to roost and be protected from the previously mentioned predators.

More to come in the following days ...