Delta musings

I first encountered Louisiana in 1988, when I was flown into Baton Rouge for a job interview. (I got the job; pitifully, I still have that job.) On that momentous flight I had a window seat and I remember looking down as we were approaching the city and thinking, "Oh dear God. I'm landing in Vietnam." Because there, stretched out below me, was the Mekong Delta, suffocating in its greenness, lush and deadly. I knew nothing about south Louisiana, except the little I had gleaned from the film The Big Easy (basically: although the guys talk funny, they understand the clitoris--which, of course, did make the job prospect rather appealing). But Vietnam? Well, heck, the consumption of dozens of feature films and documentaries and photojournalistic essays and illustrated histories had tattooed the Mekong Delta firmly on my consciousness. And there, that January afternoon, it lay below me. I kept waiting for the thwip-thwip-thwip of helicopters, for Robin Williams to howl maniacally "Gooooood morning, Vietnam!, for Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" to burst forth.

Of course it wasn't that delta, it was another: the Mississippi Delta, the bayou country of south Louisiana. But that early impression has never left me: the suffocating greenness, the lushness, the deadliness. Nature, here, is not gentle and soothing. No soft English rain. None of the swelling lullaby of a Midwestern corn field. Here, nature is on the move. And if you don't take care, it will swallow you whole.

The grass, for example, does not grow vertically; it grows sideways. Coarse and prickly, it thrusts out horizontal feelers and within a matter of weeks, creeps across and chokes the sidewalk. This is not Friendly Grass. It does not invite picnics and children's tea parties and teenaged tanning sessions. Fall asleep on your beach towel and by the time you wake up, you may well find yourself pinned down by grassy, scratchy ropes. It's like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors. It will feed on you, if given the chance.

Evidently it's also like Singapore (where I have never been). Here's J. G. Farrell's description in his wonderful novel The Singapore Grip: "Foliage sprang up on every hand with a determination unknown to our own polite European vegetation. Dark, glistening green was smeared over everything as if with a palette knife."* Perfect.

Springtime always brings these facts to mind, because it's s the time of year when the south Louisiana vegetation pretends to be polite, innocuous, pretty, easily domesticated. With the humidity levels relatively low (relative to what they'll soon be down here, that is, not relative to humidity in any normal place) and temperatures in the 70s, with the azaleas popping with color, with the birds copulating like crazy, one is easily sucked into the illusion that one can work with nature, that, you know, a garden would be lovely. But it won't be. Like the Lady in The Silver Chair, Nature soon enough reveals herself as the devouring gigantic green serpent.**

* Farrell, The Singapore Grip, 1978; NY: NYRB, 2005, p. 11.
**A reference to Book 4 of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia--but you already knew that, right? Because if not, geez louise, you poor benighted soul, go grab a copy.