The River

Yesterday I convinced my roommate to drive with me to the levee, which is about 10 miles west of us. We brought our dinner, thinking we'd eat and look out over the river. It turns out that the levee is, at points, four or five miles inland from the river. We walked along the top of it, thinking that the still little lakes must somehow be part of the big river.



I was quite confused.

Then we met W-. W- and his girlfriend had been out fishing on the lakes around the river. At first, they thought we were poachers (except they decided I probably didn't have any guns in my little sedan). It turns out that the land on the inside of the levee is mostly privately owned by hunting clubs. W- and his girlfiend belonged to one of the clubs, and in fact, W- had moved permanently to the camp six years ago. He now sells irrigation equiptment, hunts, fishes, and "parties hard" on the weekends, at the hunting club, in the most Southern place on Earth (the Mississippi Delta).



He led us in towards the river on rutted dirt roads. We passed his house, up high on stilts to keep it safe from the nine-foot floods that come most every spring (and are stopped by the levees way inland.) He stopped for a moment to drop off his catch and returned with a few cans of beer. We drove on, in through the camp, for quite a while. When we stopped, we were at the edge of the river in a small clearing. The sun was just beginning to set and there was a rainbow shooting up out of the water.



Another car of club members, friends of W-'s, pulled up after us a few minutes later. This load included a young boy with a good arm for throwing rocks in the river, a lawyer from Greenville, and another twenty-something reedy-looking man. You can belong to the club if you buy the land, they told us. Land in their part is about $1800/acre and their hunting club has, I believe, about 20,000 acres. Up North a little land is more expensive because it's better for hunting on, but they seemed to like this area just fine.

We left soon after the sun set, so that we would be able to find our way out before dark settled. Since we had spent the sunset at the river talking to W- and his friends, we hadn't eaten our dinner, so we stopped up on the levee and watched the stars instead. In my small town, the stars are bright and fill the sky. Out a few miles from settlements, they were even better.

The Delta really is a gorgeous place. Now that spring has set in, the weather is amazing and the bugs have yet to hatch (knock on wood.) And again and again I am startled by the genuine openness, friendliness, and generosity of the people that live there. I thought it wasn't true when I lived up North, that Southern hospitality was a farce. It really isn't, though. It seems to be the norm rather than the exception, and it is guileless and completely refreshing.