I have not said, nor written, much of anything about the BP oil spill in the gulf since it began. I have been watching and reading, with a sort of horrified fascination, at what the media says is going on. I have talked to my family in the New Orleans area about it very little. I think part of me was just hoping it was going to be fixed soon, and just go away and my home town, my beloved gulf coast, the wonderful, exotic and mysterious bayous that surround the humid bowl where I spent my first 35 years, would be just fine, in no time at all. Then today I read the oil is making it’s way into Lake Pontchartrain and it all hit me like a ton of bricks. Up to this point, the damage has been happening an hour or more from “my home”. I know Port Fourchon, and Barataria Bay..I have been there and I feel the loss of that land, the culture, the jobs, the seafood…Some of my best childhood memories are of going fishing with my dad at Empire. Getting up at 4am, stopping for donuts and chocolate milk for me, hot, strong chickory laden coffee for my dad. Watching the boat launched by the electric wench, into the still waters as the sun rose. The smell of the brackish water and rotten fish was, and still is, one of my favorite smells. Takes me back to those warm, childhood memories every time. The knowledge that all of this was in danger made me sad, but didn’t freak me out. But now my lake is going to be hurt, and now I am freaked out. I have lived on both sides of Lake Pontchartain, South and North shores. I commuted over the world’s longest bridge, all 24 monotonous miles of it, for years. I fished, swam, dived, water skiid, jet skiid, tanned, loved, played and day dreamed on that lake. I drove over it, sat beside it, dangled my feet in it, fed the birds drifting on it, and smiled as the waves splashed against the slippery cement steps and up into my face. It seems my entire adult life was touched by that lake, and revolved around it at the same time. The better part of my last 10 years in Louisiana was spent living and working within a mile of the lake. It was always there, peeking between the trees or office buildings, the smell of the half-salty water in the air. Seagulls were often flying over my office and home reminding me how very close the peace and beauty of Lake Pontchartain was. My favorite italian restaurant sat nestled against the levy, right next to the Coast Guard station, and nothing beat a slow, romantic walk along the breakwater after another Two Tony’s meal, straight from the italian version of Heaven. I played in the lake as a small child, was barred from the lake for part of my adolescent years because of pollution, and celebrated the return to the water when it was healed again. I looked forward to weekend trips to Pontchartrain Beach when it was an amusement park, cried when it was torn down, bitched about the plans to turn the area into condos and attented Back to The Beach every year, a stone’s throw from where I used to stand in line for the Rajun Cajun and Zephyr. For the first time since the trauma that was Katrina, I feel lost, afraid and scared for my home, my people, my culture and my lake. MY LAKE. For the first time since Katrina I am sad that I am not there. For the first time since Katrina, I am afraid my home is changed forever and won’t be fixed again in my lifetime. I know New Orleans and the gulf region will recover from Katrina. Time and money, lots of both, will do the job. But this time…I just don’t know.
