When our sons joined the same Boy Scout troop some years ago, my oldest brother and I got in the habit of adventuring close to home. The troop’s weekend field trips usually involved drives of no more than an hour or two beyond our driveways.
Those brief journeys reminded us how varied the world in and around Louisiana can be. We picnicked near a waterfall one Saturday at Clark Creek, just over the state line in the Mississippi community of Woodville. A long afternoon walk through the Civil War battlefield in Vicksburg stands out, too. Autumn camping near St. Francisville, an overnight stay at Palmetto Island State Park in Abbeville, and a rainy but memorable fishing trip near Port Fourchon have their own places in my mental scrapbook.
Those memories are special now that our sons are grown and living out of state. But my brother, who’s wise about these things, seems to understand that just because our days as Scout dads are over, weekend outings don’t have to end. As summer started this year, he invited me to join him one Saturday for a kayak ride in Lafayette.
I hadn’t paddled a canoe in several years, and I’d never been in a kayak. Luckily, our route through a bayou behind Lafayette Regional Airport was forgiving for novices.
“I’ve never done this before,” I told a fellow kayaker as I shoved off near Vermilionville. “I know,” he said, more in sympathy than sarcasm. My inexperience clearly showed as I tried to alternate my strokes to move upstream. Favoring one side or the other, I looked like a one-legged duck who was swimming in circles. Although my technique remains a work in progress, I mastered it enough to navigate the route. I didn’t capsize, though our excursion left us all pleasantly damp.
I’m looking right now at the journal I kept in my pocket while we paddled. The pages, warped by water and heat, record that morning better than anything I could have written. When I run my fingers across their surface, reading the wrinkles like Braille, our Saturday on the bayou comes back to me. I can see again our little armada tucked into the shade of a bank while we rested awhile, talking of nothing in particular. I remember the turtle, solemn as an Easter Island totem while he sunned on a log. My mind replays the image of a black egret swooping from a limb, a strange shadow quickened by flight.
I’ve been thinking about this with the arrival of autumn, as another vacation season recedes and many of us return our suitcases to the shelf. As my kayak trip reminded me, even small getaways can be meaningful, and they can happen any time of year.
My brother and I were happy to share those field trips with our sons. But adventure is too precious to be left only to the very young.
Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.
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Publish date : 2024-09-15 00:00:00
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