johnbyronkuhner.com

palatially I had a few hours of daylight left me after Catherine’s departure, so I got on my bike for the first time and rode around town.

cantankerously I will confess that I was confused by what I saw – I saw only contradictions. Biking through town I saw new homes everywhere, mostly of the cheapest, pre-fabricated or trailer variety. It appeared that Venice was a young place – probably built to service the oil industry. But by the river I came upon an old cemetery – a few ruined brick-and-plaster sarcophagi, above-ground as is local style. There were people born in 1841 who were buried here. One stone said that Hipolite and Roselia Buras had donated the cemetery in 1855.

At the southern end of town the levee came to an end, and outside the levees there were plants – mostly with names of energy companies I had never heard of on their gates like “MARTIN.”  And others whose names I knew full well, like “HALLIBURTON.” Known or unknown, they were all ugly places, surrounded by chain-link fence, and with joyless posted warnings about entering or smoking or being intoxicated or anything else on the facility. But in between these plants was a sign for a National Wildlife Refuge. I biked down its driveway to the water, read some informative placards about the hydrology and wildlife of the Mississippi Delta, and then continued on my way. Then there was a little marina, with shrimp boats all lined up, but they looked neglected and derelict. There was what we call “infrastructure” scattered everywhere outside the levee: the road threaded its way in between waterways, and on each waterway were docks broken and entire, businesses functioning and abandoned, rusting metal buildings, gravel parking lots, cranes, work trailers. Garbage was strewn everywhere, and the shoulder of the road was generously sprinkled with gravel and broken glass – precisely what a cyclist wants to roll over at the beginning of a long trip. In some ways it was one of the ugliest places I had ever been.

Halliburton Road.

I biked by a hill, which of course was artificial: the garbage dump. As I went by it, I slowly became aware that I had never – never – in my entire life heard so many seagulls. Of course there were seagulls here – the fact was so obvious that I hadn’t paused to notice it. But these were present in a number that simply astounded me. And the more I looked, the more birds I saw – mostly wading birds, which I did not know well, but certainly herons and egrets and ibises – large birds. Down Halliburton Road a pair of yellow-crowned night herons (Nyctanassa violacea) were nesting in a large bush, peering out at me as I peered at them.  And scattered in the ditches were strange monstrous lilies and beautiful irises and almost everywhere was a ragged but pretty senecio of some sort or other. It was a garbage dump in bloom, a bird refuge made of rusty metal and broken blacktop.

I found a side road outside the levee leading to a place called Cypress Cove, and I turned down it. This was the hotel my guide book had recommended, but we had been unable to find. There was a pretty marina lined with trim little boats glowing orange in the setting sun. I walked into the lobby of the hotel and spoke with the hotel manager there, a lovely woman named Terri.

Yellow-crowned night herons, Nyctanassa violacea, nesting on Halliburton Road.

“I’m planning on biking up the Mississippi River from here, but I don’t want to bike 2400 miles upriver from here, and not see the 25 miles downriver. But for that I need the help of someone who has a boat. Do you know someone I’d be able to go out to the Gulf with? I’d really like to do it while I’m here. But I saw the prices for charter fishing boats, they charge $750 to go out, and honestly I really can’t pay that much.”

“Oh for sure seven-fifty is a minimum. Yeah there’s no point in you doing that if you’re not going to be fishing. You know why don’t you speak with Mike Ballay [pronounced “ballet”], let me give you his number. He’s the harbormaster here, he’ll know everything about who’s going out and who’d be likely to take you. Let me give you his number.” She wrote it down on a little card. “He’ll be here tomorrow morning, early.”

“Early as in, seven?”

“Seven, six, sure. The earlier the better. He’ll be here by five-thirty, you can call anytime after that.”

Speaking with the harbormaster seemed like the right way to go. One way or another, I wasn’t going to leave Venice without seeing the Gulf. I didn’t care how long it took. But it seemed I was well on my way.

The sun was setting over the marsh as I biked back.  Something was ending, and something new had begun.