With access to wifi at the Grand Isle State Park we’d been watching the weather hawkishly. With all Tim’s years as a messenger he’s got his weather favorites and I tend to find his readings to be more accurate that what the computerized meteorologists spit out. Our morning ride to the restroom and back was a lovely partly cloudy sunrise and comfortable enough for just t-shirts. No sooner had we’d put our lips to our cups then the sky turned black and the wind began to rock Squatch with massive gusts. It couldn’t have been five minutes more before an e-mail popped up; subject line: WE’RE STILL ON! Having just thawed out over the day and half of nice weather we weren’t too eager to get back outside where the temperature had just dropped 25 degrees (not counting wind chill). However, we’d been looking forward to today for almost two weeks.
Back in Port Aransas Texas I searched Louisiana Coast and habitat restoration. A few clicks later and we were signing up to plant marsh grass off Port Fourchon, LA on March 5th. We’ve done many a plantings so we knew pretty much what to expect. Ha! We had no idea. I’m not sure this is an experience we are likely to duplicate.

First let me explain that coast is a loose word in these parts. The ecologically rich marsh areas are where land is a mixture of mud, sand, fresh and salt waters that extends almost as north as it does east and west. As Tim mentioned subsidence is a huge problem (for more in depth, but good reading see: http://www.americaswetlandresources.com/background_facts/detailedstory/causes.html). While it’s most pronounced in Louisiana this issue is happening on all our coasts due to America’s over zealous building of dams (recommending the documentary Dam Nation, on netflix, very well done and ends on a high note). Marshes  are also huge carbon sinks. Meaning they bring in much more carbon dioxide from the air then they put out. The extra carbon dioxide goes into the mud and is trapped there for hundreds of years.

Bundled up and caffeinated we arrived at the Port Fourchon marina right on time. We signed in, packed our lunches in our sweet new Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana swag bag, got some knee high rubber boots and a pep talk. Then it was off to the boats! Today was a special day too. We were lucky enough to be helping to plant Smooth Blade Cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), which we normally pull in California, and Black Mangrove (Avicennia germinans) that is being studied by three students from University of Louisiana Lafayette. The students Eric, Taylor and Laura had laid out several plots at varying elevations and densities in order to see which plots are more successful. Current restoration plantings are at approximately a 5′ plant spread. The restoration crew learned the hard way that some plants also don’t do quite as well at certain elevations and they we needing to replant the area. Other volunteers for the day included many college students, a couple of retired friends who were pretty experienced in restoration and a few fellas from Conoco Phillips who is a also financial contributor to this project. The three boats that got us to our destination, as well as the air boat that brought the sacks of plants to the site are hired hands. Add all the food, drinks, bags, boots etc and you realize that this effort needs financial fairies as much as it needs volunteers.

Once off the boats we walked out to our destination, a previously cut pipeline channel that had been filled back in with dredge material from the local bayous. Some of this material includes oyster shells, nails, hammers, pipes and rumoredly a still good roll of duct tape. The heavier matter falling close to where the pipe pumped it in. Mostly though it’s a mixture of mud and sand. Having been raining recently the mud on top was dried and broken in polygon fractures. Walking on it gives one a new idea of what solid ground is and added to the other worldly aura of the day. The students had laid out several planting spots with flags where we needed to insert the plant plugs. But we still needed to get the plants from where they’d been air boated in some 200 yards down the channel, most still behind a small hedge of mangroves in burlap sacks weighing some 20-25lbs each. While Tim and several others hauled sleds full of plants and other necessities I got to work with my new friend Shae and one of the students to try and get the rest of the bags out from behind the hedge.

As I trudged back and forth along the quickly softening mud I was getting deeper and deeper in it. So I thought I’d stand still while the ladies brought the sacks to me and I tossed them out to be picked up. This was genius until I realized that I was over ankle deep in mud within minutes and needed to crawl forward in order to extract my boots. Shae was also falling over and had to get into deep mud to get the sacks further back. The next time the sled crew showed up I hollered out and we quickly chained ganged the sacks of plants out from the hedged area. Occasionally needing to stop the machine so that one of us could crawl out of the mud they’d inevitably sunk into. We started taking the plants out of the sacks and placing the sacks on top of the mud. Eventually with so many sacks laid out it made the area begin to feel more like trying to walk in a jump house but at least we weren’t sinking anymore. Meanwhile the wind was getting stronger and the temp dropping with every gust. By the time we started planting everyone was caked in mud and well chilled. Here’s what I love about habitat restoration volunteers though, no one complains. It’s hard dirty work yet people either love it as much as we do or don’t want to seem like they weren’t up for it. Stopping only for a quick lunch we planted a respectable amount of plants before heading back to the boats.

Sitting on the boat listening to the busy harbor radio chatter of captains and controllers, shooting the shit a bit with the students and our fellow volunteers we smiled in the comradery of the day’s work. I looked at the mud under my too long nails and looked at Tim and felt…happy.

“Do you think Lloyd has ever accidentally dumped a vehicle into one of these farm ditches?” I asked Rachael.   I reached for the steering wheel and my foot was searching for the brake pedal even though I knew it was pointless. We had put our faith in the fact that Lloyd and his assistant Darren knew what they were doing out on these patched and potholed backcountry Louisiana farm roads, however my equilibrium had taken a lot of hours getting used to the suspension on Lil’ Squatch and being an extra five feet off the ground made going into an bumpy, off-camber turn feel more dangerous than a county fair rollercoaster that was missing a few cotter pins. And almost as fun. “I don’t think this is legal in California” said Rachael. “Uh-uh. Bet it ain’t legal here either, but here we are.” I had to admit that not only was it kind of pleasant to be sitting back and letting someone else cart us along but also the view was pretty great being this high off the ground. Unfortunately we were up on the back of Lloyd’s truck because Squatch’s water pump had seized about 3 miles from the Poverty Point archaeological site (a name that caused the truck dispatcher to chuckle unsympathetically) and we were being taken into his small town shop to fix it.

Poverty Point has one of the tallest and most ancient of the mounds built in the Mississippi river drainage and it is flanked by rows of semicircular ridges constructed around a huge plaza. With the higher vantage we had from the cab I started wondering if they moved around those incredible quantities of dirt just so they could get a better view of the landscape. A couple days earlier we had climbed Emerald mound on the other side of the Mississippi River. I knew that these two structures at over 65 feet tall traded claims of being the second largest pre-Columbian mounds but what I hadn’t yet learned was that the culture at Poverty Point had begun construction 1000 years before the Pyramids in Egypt had been built while Emerald mound had been created much later and was still in active use when Spanish and French explorers ventured into the region. These two sites are sort of bookends of a cultural phenomenon that spanned several thousand years, most of the length of the largest river on the continent and began with hunter-gatherers in what is now Louisiana. The fecund landscape provided by the flows of the Mississippi and the rich Southeastern forests offered foods from fish and crawdads out of the bayous to nuts, plants deer and bear in the woodlands.

These town sites and ceremonial structures have survived in an ever-morphing landscape of shifting river channels, mysterious and languid bayous and massive and regular flooding. They were built by people who respected the power of water and recognized the abundance that came from the replenishment provided by the Mississippi River. This civilization was comparable to the Aztecs or Mayans further south and had towns larger than any Colonial city would achieve until the 19th century, yet by the time that frontiersmen were settling in the region the population had fallen dramatically, most likely ravaged by European diseases acquired from those first visitors. Without advocates for the land and culture it was literally plowed under. Mounds and platforms are abundant in the region but often hidden in forest groves, covered by crops or with pioneer homes built atop them, a recognition of the value of higher ground.

With our little guy patched up Rachael and I had an engagement to get to on the tenuous southern edge of Louisiana. I suppose after walking among the remnants of mysterious earthworks my eyes had become sensitive to the altered shapes of the landscape. However, it would have been hard to miss the massive plumbing that the Army Corp of Engineers and others have created in this flood prone environment and it was startling in contrast. Moving south along the Mississippi you can find yourself on a road high atop a berm that extends hundreds of miles in an attempt to keep this workhorse of a river just where we want it. Then upon descending the levees we found ourselves skirting back basins and crossing the channels, dams and locks of a vast system of flood control and navigation infrastructure. This monumental yoking of nature was exactly why we found ourselves at the once expanding foot of the continent. It is likely we are asking too much of these waters. Our mixed purposes of large-scale transportation and protecting fertile and populated farmland have stifled the regenerative system that brought this abundance to the region. The river system wants to spill out chaotically. It needs too. Those silt-laden waters of the “The Big Muddy” created half of the state over the past few thousand years. Today Louisiana loses two football fields an hour. The causes of this loss are multi-faceted but it is clear that human activity is the major culprit. Those sediment rich Mississippi waters are flushed out to the deep Gulf through the channelized waterway. A vast number of channels for the oil and gas industry have created saltwater intrusion pathways that spread erosion. Even an invasive South American rodent called nutria, brought here to produce furs, have exploded in numbers consuming a large amount of vegetation that would otherwise contribute to soil build up. This ethereal Gulf Coast edge of sandy barrier islands and once sprawling marshland is also what protects the region from hurricanes and their storm surges so a lot of players have a stake in this. Fishermen, lowland farmers, coastal dwellers and even the shipping and petroleum industries see the value in regenerating this natural buffer. Projected sea level rise only makes this more urgent. This is how we found ourselves lucky enough to spend a cold, windy day getting knee deep in boot swallowing mud with a motley bunch of people. Volunteers are not only trying to put a dent in the loss of these wetlands but we also hope that studying this work will teach us to do it most effectively. As I dragged a hundred pound sled loaded with mangrove and cordgrass along an old pipeline channel I couldn’t help feeling some connection to the long lost people who piled baskets full by the millions into elaborate and now mysterious mounds.