A River of Histories

I went to the Sterlington Branch Public Library in Ouachita Parish this afternoon for a presentation on a whim. The newsletter with events said:

July 16, 2012 5:30 p.m Local wildlife artist Glenn Gore, founder of the Ouachita River Foundation, discusses the history and importance of the Ouachita River. 

I had not done the research before going but it happens I'd already come across this group on one of my many webspeditions and was happy to make the connection. Ground truthing.

It turns out Glenn Gore is a very curious man: a photographer and free-lance historian. His preoccupation with the river began early on, growing up on the banks of the Ouachita, walking the levees and fishing the local waters. He had never really explored it much except for the few miles he knew and so one day, having woken up to the fact, began to explore the outer fringes of the known. In the 80s he purchased a 35mm and began to take pictures of the scenery. It came to him one day the though of photographing the entire length of the river, which he did and made a kind of career out of it, as a spokesman for its natural beauty and cultural value. He founded the Ouachita River Foundation, appeared on several TV shows, published calendars celebrating the river he loved.

His photography was set across many tables. The pictures were audaciously simple, straightforward and sincere.

Ouachita River in the fall. © 2007 - Ouachita River Foundation

He told many stories of traveling by back roads and boat, searching for the perfect silence and wildness folded up in the bend of his river. He hunted per-historic shark teeth and seashells from a time not long ago when Louisiana was still part of the Gulf of Mexico, not filled in of sediments washed out after the last glaciation. He told the stories of the Hunter-Dunbar Expedition, one of four Louisiana Purchase surveys, where men dragged and heaved their boat up the Ouachita in one of the driest of years. He told of mounds built by Native Americans, many of which were hardly known and hidden away on private property, locally referred to as piles of dirt. These people long ago, lived by the river, grew crops in its fertile floodplain, traveled it like a highway. He told of a sad event described in the quote below:


Population growth in Louisiana has led to rapidly expanding cities and extended transportation networks. Modern cities are often in the same places that Indians and early Europeans built their settlements, so city growth is almost certain to disturb archaeological sites. As early as the turn of the century, archaeologists were charting the destruction of a mound group in eastern Louisiana. A city was growing up around one of the largest groups of mounds in the Southeastern United States. In 1931, an archaeologist wrote about the leveling of one of the mounds, a square multi-stage one, 80 feet tall and 180 feet on each side. The dirt was used to build the approach ramps for a bridge. Today, part of only one mound remains, protected because of the recent cemetery on top. How an Archaeologist Studies the Past.


He told a story of one day photographing a beautiful bend in the river and being confronted by someone at the banks (was it the wife of a leisure angler somewhere at shore?). She asked him what he was photographing.
"The river," he said.
 "I don't see anything," she paused a lot, confused. "What exactly are you trying to take a picture of, though?"
"Just the river, right there," he said, un-poetically.
"I've lived here for 30 year and never seen nothin' worth taken a picture of," she said.

He laughed then, said he wondered what he had been doing all his life. Of course, there are others that do love the river and many more that could benefit from knowing what he described as "our heritage."

Now the Corps wants to cut down all the trees on the levee, Gore laughed nervously. It jeopardizes the integrity of the structure, they say. (See: "Trees v. levee in corps fight" The News Star, July 7, 2012) Needless to say, there weren't many fans of the Corps in the audience. I felt right at home.

The room was filled with old folks. By at least 40 years, I was the youngest person in the room, scrawling notes in my book. Oh, the stories they could all tell, I thought.  They told of the Duty Ferry, geologic uplift along the river causing a section of deep water that you would never know about, without speaking to a geologist (and someone in the crowd had).

I asked where I could find a nice, pristine place to go swim and explore the river, legally. He said there were not many. You need a boat. I had at least five people come up to me afterwards to suggest little known swimming holes. These people too are historians, I thought. The could each talk for hours and I would happily listen all day and night, of the years when their grandfathers grew vegetables and sold them to travelers on the steamboats. But there is something terribly wrong with the picture to me, because I am the only young one, the only one writing it down. I wondered aloud whether Mr. Gore would ever put his research in a book or gather up his notes, articles and clippings into a Special Collections at the parish library. But immediately, I felt ashamed to have even come near the insinuation that he had not already done enough. I thanked him many times and then left, but not before dutifully filling up on refreshments like the scrawny 20-something I am.

I hesitated a moment outside my truck and looked long across a crop field, feeling the wind and the falling light of the sun on my face. It was beautiful evening, another reason to keep living.

*

Promissory Note

by Galway Kinnell

If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting star’s
I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion.

Strong is Your Hold, 2007