My Kayaking Experience
As I embarked on my kayaking excursion, I kept asking myself why I care about this place so much and why it means so much to me. After all, it is just land right? Well maybe to those that have not spent a good part of their lives here, but for me it's much more than that. This land is what made me the person I am today. It's where my father took me deer hunting for the first time, where I learned to shoot a gun, where my grandfather took me berry picking, where my grandmother taught me how to cook, where I graduated from high school, but most of all it's where I grew up. Every place here holds 1,000 memories all at once—the lighthouse is where a few friends and I jumped off the dock into the bayou one night, Fort Jackson is where we used to run through the dark tunnels and play hide-and-seek, the pumping station is where we used to go mud riding with our four-wheelers, the river batcher is where we re-made a video of MXC…I could go on for hours. You see, this place to me is not just a piece of land. It is a place where I can walk down the street and know by name every single person who passes me, it’s a place where I can go to the post office and catch up with friends I haven’t seen in weeks, it’s a place I go to and escape from the hustle and bustle of the city, it’s a place where I can be myself. Several people have asked me, “What can possibly make you live way down there?” But what they fail to understand is that I am not forced to live here, I choose to. And I’m not ashamed to live in the “backwoods” as they say. Because of this place, I have gained an inordinate amount of love and respect for nature, so much so that I have decided to make a career out of protecting the wetlands and all the life it supports. This place has given me identity. It may sound crazy, but I identify myself with the place I was raised--Buras, LA. This is my home; it is a part of me, and I believe I can speak for all locals of Plaquemines when I say that we are intricately connected to our land; by taking it away or simply allowing it to disappear, a part of who we are goes along with it.
Below I have included several music files of zydeco and cajun music that you can listen to.
