The main “sit-down” area is the RV camp and fishing pier that pushes out into Caminada Bay behind Ricky's establishment. Here, people gather in a communal boiling hut to make expansive meals of fish and shrimp and crawfish and chicken wings and trade stories about the fishing they’d done that day as little kids toss nets off the pier and repeatedly spit in the water, perhaps mimicking their dad’s (or mom’s) ploy for bringing good luck to the cast.
Further on down the pier is a cutting hut where people gather as fisherman fillet their fish and boast of the weight of their catch. Yesterday a man presided over a King Mackerel that he had caught earlier that day. It evidently was the largest landed that season in two states! And, he would happily repeat to anyone who asked the weight of his monstrous fish that now sagged over the sides of his wheelbarrel. (39.93 lbs...)
At the end of this hotbed of activity one can sit in halved blue barrels where even more fishermen idly cast into the water even as an incredible sunset bathes the sky. Last night as Janet and I settled in on these chairs to watch heat lightning from a thunderstorm far away north in the direction of the town of Golden Meadow, I felt like we did not belong here. We were after all occupying chairs meant for a fisherperson or crabber. We don’t fish. We don’t “birdwatch.” So why were we coming down here to Grand Isle, if not for either of these activities? We were asked that very question by the weathered men wearing baseball caps in Ricky’s main office. They eyed us suspiciously as we got our room key, their faces as lined as the aerial photograph of Grand Isle and the surrounding bayou country they had taped to the top of the office’s front desk. Crisscrossed by canals cut by the oil companies for their pipelines, the waterways looked like roads and the men looked as if they’d seen it all, but they had yet to see the likes of Janet and me. We’d come a long, long way to get to Grand Isle and we didn’t much do what the rest of the people do here. We were definitely not locals, our accents gave us away and given our lack of interest in things-that-are-important-in-Grand-Isle we just didn’t feel like we belonged here.
Perhaps this trip to Grand Isle, this little slice of heaven, was a big mistake.
But, after a day of quiet exploration we have a love of this beautiful island. If not for the fishing we would not have had conversations with some of the people here who were as curious of us as we were of how to gingerly handle Hardhead Catfish. New Jersey is a quite a very long way from here and every time I said that I’ve traveled here from my home it is met with astonishment… and awe.
If not for the fishing Janet and I would not been so lucky to see the fishing rodeo that was being held at a nearby pier (and scored some great Jambalaya and free beer) as the men in their team shirts stood around and listened with great pride over the prizes awarded for entry’s like Bull Redfish and Speckled Trout.
If not for the plentiful food the area readily gives up, Janet and I would not have had a meal of boiled crabs featuring the meatiest Blue Claws I have ever struggled with. At one point, as we got elbows deep in our meal of crabs and gumbo the man himself, Ricky, ambled over and remarked favorably on our meal. He asked if we had caught them ourselves and then named the place when we shyly said we didn’t have the tools to pluck these critters from the water. As we sat there in the boiling hut at one of the picnic tables, other families came in with their own pots and started boiling or frying their own meals. Soon every table was filled and we finally felt like we belonged at Ricky’s Motel and RV camp.
After a stroll on the beach we headed back to the pier once again and sat amongst the fishermen and their reels, though we were only armed with cigars and cigs. Soon we were enchanted by the tale of one fellow who worked on an offshore oil rig. We listened to the rigors of his job of working "on top of a bomb" and the loss of his French culture. He only spoke a word or two, his father, a police officer on the waterways a bit more, and his grandfather just a few words of English. We watched as he caught Hardhead Catfish and gingerly unhooked them so he wouldn’t get “stuck.” At one point a stranger walking by asked him what he was catching. “Hardhead," he drawled. “They’ll stick ya,” said the stranger.
Today we made for the beach at Oak Lane. There are public access points all along Route 1, but the woman at the welcome center said she liked this one the best because of the “nice walkway” over the dunes. So we went and plopped ourselves down in the fine brown sand and watched as a man walked in the water waist deep, his hand trailing along a string set up between two sticks in the water a dozen feet off shore. As he came to a knot in the string he slowly lifted it, placed a net beneath what was bait and caught a crab. He did this a number of times along the length of string before he reached the other stick, snaring half dozen crabs in the process. Janet and I applauded him when he turned for shore. He smiled at us.
Yeah, Grand Isle was a great place to visit.
This is my first post in a few days. Turns out Ricky's Motel and RV Camp had a wireless connection, but our computer is too old for their system and despite the repeated attempts by the man who set up the wireless we were unable to get on the internet. We are now in Houma, Louisiana after driving around quite a bit. We left Grand Isle this morning and drove north through what is left of Leeville, then Gold Meadow, Galliano, Cut Off and Larose before heading west and then south again to have a drink at the Co Co Marina in Cocodrie. We turned north again... for there was no more land south of Cocodrie.... and skirted Bayou Grand Calliou and passed through some remarklable salt marshes. The land is literally sinking into the ocean here. It's a combination of levees on the Mississippi preventing it's flooding and thereby supplying the area with new sendiment, and erosion caused by oil companies cutting canals for the pipelines through the grasses and allowing salt water into this delicate ecosystem. As we drove north along LA57 the skeletal remains of oak trees reached up out of the water, killed by the salt water. Even one of the fellows at Ricky's remarked that the land had changed drastically in just the fifteen years he had been coming to Grand Isle. There is a large bridge being built in Leeville. I guess they are preparing for when the land there, barely just two lanes of blacktop now, will finally disappear into the water.
thanks for reading...
-greg
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