OLD RIDGES

Some mornings I get up wanting to write and feel a certain fogginess of mind and absence of subject matter that reminds me of E. B. White and his essay of “Writer at Work.” In March of 1927, he wrote that Edna Millay was contemplating a trip to Washington, D.C., and he quotes a Washington news story: “to have this tender poet here in cherry blossom time and to hear her version of this glorious spectacle [would be great].” E.B. White, who is obviously struggling to create his essay for the day, remarks that “Even the theme is laid out for her, like clean linen.”

E. B. White says that a writer is always straining his eyes, peering ahead and around so that when the moment of revelation comes, his eyes are poppy and tired and his sensitized mind has become fogged by the “too frequent half-stimuli of imagined sight…”

I sat here, reading those lines, waiting for my mind to clear, and wondered if there were new ridges there that prevented clear thoughts. What appeared to me was an actual vision of ridges —chenier ridges south of the Intracoastal Waterway in Louisiana. I could almost smell the marshy air and see oak trees in the distance — old beach ridges or cheniers. The sand in the ridges is above the marsh so that oak trees abound in the dry soil there. According to an entry in Roadside Geology in Louisiana by Darwin Spearing, the ridge, Little Chenier, marked the position of a beach 2800 years ago. The town of Creole is strung out along another chenier where Chenier Perdue, 2500 years old, and Pumpkin Ridge, 2200 years old, merge.

The largest beach ridge plain in Louisiana is near the Caminada-Moreau Coast with as many as 70 sandy beach ridges that began to grow about 700 years ago. Of course like much of Louisiana coastland, the Caminada-Moreau coast continues to erode.

I’m more familiar with the ridges near Creole, Louisiana because I explored that territory when I was writing my book for young adults entitled Kajun Kween. Those ridges provided the setting for this tale about a young girl named Petite Marie Melancon who wasn’t so petite and who became the heroine in a comic strip. I have an envelope of photographs showing scenes of cheniers that includes a beautiful one which Dr. Sullivan snapped, and I framed for a wall of my study. There’s even an alligator in a corner of the photo, and it’s a scene that has not only inspired me while I was writing Kajun Kween, it became the cover of a book of. poetry entitled Old Ridges in which the opening poem describes the scenery I encountered back in the early 2,000s. 

Although the theme wasn’t “laid out for me, like clean linen,” as E. B. White wrote, my nostalgic thoughts sent me to the bookcase where I found Old Ridges and began to read:

OLD RIDGES

Writing a story of persiflage

I found a place of legend,

a station of shade 

cool enough to wade in,

no voice, no sound,

an alligator hiding on the bank

sliding into murky water,

breaking the silence and the shade.

Further back, I could see ancient ridges,

oak groves, wild grapevines overarching

marshmallow, yucca, and oleander,

some distance from the Intracoastal Canal

where I once rode in a boat

bound for Cheniere au Tigre,

weaving through a network of canals

and anchoring at a wooden dock

that may have been near the old town.

We climbed an old-fashioned stile

astride a barbed wire fence,

searching for an abandoned hotel,

and found: the bones of a cow,

the feather of a crow,

the leaf of a toothache tree --

mystery.

Old oaks stood sentinel, asking:

Do you think it’s too late?

I haven’t forgotten how it is

to die before dying,

consider my age,

consider this shade,

no voice, no sound.

What was I looking for?

The corpse of a cowboy lying

among bones of Brahma and Charolais?

a chest of Lafitte’s treasure?

the old watchtowers of WWII?

the tiger that mauled a boy a century before?

Hackberry trees grew among stands of oaks

and in the center of one grove,

a house of silvered cypress, 

torn screen on the sagging porch,

door ajar, as if someone had just departed,

the abandoned house among trees

buffeted and twisted by Gulf winds.

Like the trees, it seemed to say

I haven’t forgotten how it is

to die before dying,

consider my age,

consider this shade,

no voice, no sound…

and a tiger lurks over the ridge.

CHENIERES, BEACH RIDGES

Cheniere by Don Thornton

I have many pieces of art by regional artists in my home, and among my favorites is a small painting of a cheniere by the deceased artist/sculptor Don Thornton of New Iberia. Don gifted me with the painting years ago after I'd written several articles about him for regional publications. He did a series of paintings of the Louisiana Cheniere Plain which extends from Sabine Lake to Vermilion Bay along the Gulf Coast, and my prized painting is #64 in this series. I was drawn to the painting a few days ago when a heavy storm forced me to stay indoors and enjoy my book and art collections.

I became familiar with chenieres almost forty years ago when I joined a group of four females who set out one humid summer day to find Cheniere au Tigre in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. We embarked from Intracoastal City in a speedboat piloted by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a biologist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who was armed with a pile of maps by which she attempted to guide us.  Although I'm not sure we found this famous site that was advertised as a summer resort in the early 20th century and which offered tourists room and board for $1.50 per night at that time, but we did hike through a wood of old live oaks that topped the sandy ridges of the Cheniere Plain. A Cheniere Plain consists of a beach ridge separated by marsh and swamp vegetation, and is often wooded; in fact, the word is derived from the French word, "chene," which means "oak" to designate the ancient oaks growing on the ridges.

Explorer, Cheniere au Tigre

Several books have been written about Cheniere Caminada, a cheniere adjacent to New Orleans that was destroyed by a hurricane in 1893. This cheniere was settled by the Chitimacha Indians, and because of the oak grove at the tip of the peninsula, it was called an island. Early settlers of the cheniere included Lafitte's privateers, among whom was an Italian named Vincent Gambi who raided any vessel he sighted in the Gulf. Descriptions of his exploits and of the famous hurricane are recorded in a volume entitled Cheniere Caminada, Buried at Sea, by Dale P. Rogers. It's an account of the tidal wave and hurricane that killed 2000 people living on the island in 1893 and includes photographs, maps, and drawings depicting the disaster. Some of the remains of buildings the hurricane did not totally destroy were salvaged and reused, one of which is the Curole home later occupied by the descendants of the Curoles in Cut Off, Louisiana.

Chenieres appear in my young adult book, The Kajun Kween and also in a book of poetry entitled Old Ridges. The photograph on the cover of the latter, by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, is among my favorite photos of Louisiana, and if readers look carefully at the bayou pictured, they may sight an alligator snoozing on the bank.

The following verse is extracted from the poem, "Old Ridges," which is the lead poem of Old Ridges and alludes to the famous Cheniere au Tigre trip that four adventurous females took too many years ago:

"...Hackberry trees grew among stands of oaks
and in the center of one grove,
a house of silvered cypress,
torn screen on the sagging porch,
door ajar, as if someone had just departed,
the abandoned house among trees
buffeted and twisted by Gulf winds.

Like the trees, it seemed to say
I haven't forgotten how it is
to die before dying,
consider my age,
consider this shade,
no voice, no sound...
and a tiger lurks over the ridge."