Sunrise Over Cypremort Point, Salty Air In The Nostrils

And the wind in our hair!




So good to see my friend smiling.




With the pressures and stress of everyday life behind us, what a thrill it is to head out to Vermilliom Bay at sunrise with pink clouds on the horizon, recreational fishermen, lined up in the Quintana Canal leaving the boat launch,



and shrimpers everywhere,




We've got...

a bundle of crab nets strapped to the bow,









and then it won't be long before we get into Marsh Island,




with high hopes of finding tasty and fun to catch fish.



Even big boys love their toys!



I'll be 55 years young next month, and looking at the white foam gushing behind a speeding boat on Vermillion Bay has been a meditation for me for as long as I can remember.


High tide surges into the brackish marsh through a man made dam which serves to regulate the mixing of fresh and salt water, and at the same time, allows recreational harvesting of shrimp, crabs, and fish.

As a kid, my daddy took me out into Vermillion Bay and Marsh Island, to fish, shrimp, and to hunt in the surrounding marshland. I assume he loved it as much as I did, because he took me often, but he was not one to share his feelings.



He's gone now, so I can't ask him, but I beleive he shared that with me because he needed those days on the water to reaffirm his human existence and to reconnect with something many of us in our modern, high tech, industrialized society fail to preserve: an inescapable relationship with the abundance of natural water on our planet.

A rock weir now "protects" the fragile marshland in the absence of the barrier reef we destroyed in the twentieth century.

About 50 years ago, Jacques Cousteau began to document his quest to educate the world regarding the importance of our oceans and the destruction of them by man.

Ed has learned how to park his boat:


Cousteau's TV programs have inspired me all of my life, and set the stage for my becoming a swamp tour guide, a permanent resident of the basin, and ultimately a nature television program host.

I lived fulltime, on my houseboat in the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp for ten years,



and I loved it, but as much as it is unwise to live in harms way, in the wake of 5 major hurricanes destroying peoples lives along coastal Louisiana in the last decade, I am nonetheless attracted to residing on the coast, with seagulls yaking at sunrise, and where the tide brings in schools of shad, mullet, and pogey every morning, right past my front door.



Welcome to: "My Wild Louisiana!"