Atchafalaya Autumn

The author's introduction: This book is a very personal document for me. Most of the text is taken from journals in which I recorded observations, experiences, thoughts and feelings during the many days and nights I spent on houseboats and in camps in the Atchafalaya Basin. These journal entries, which are not necessarily arranged in chronological order, go back to 1992 when I began seriously my effort to return to an earlier, simpler kind of life. And I started at Bayou Chene, once the site of a community of six hundred people, approachable only by water, now abandoned and covered by layer upon layer of sand and silt - the sediment dumped into the Atchafalaya Spillway each year by the waters of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. So this is a book about change: change in the landscape and waters due to sedimentation, change in appearance and character due to the effects of logging, and change in myself as I attempt to simplify my life and become focused. For the most part the photographs included here represent my attempts to capture on film that time of early morning and later afternoon sometimes called "the magic hour." Many of these images were made at Lake Fausse Pointe, an exceptionally beautiful part of the Basin, and the present location of my own houseboat. Although nearly all the changes that have occurred in the Atchafalaya Basin before and during my lifetime are negative and disappointing to me, the entire area remains my favorite place on earth. I believe that this book will help reveal why that feeling is not unreasonable.