There’s a place, thirty miles from the city of New Orleans, a home away from home - a friend’s oasis.
A place where the rising sun gently greets the marsh, and, the setting sun melds effortlessly into the lake.
Bayou Liberty and Lake Pontchartrain… it’s the best of both worlds. Our friend’s camp rests between the two.
I recall those days of letting the good times roll on Carr Drive.
Summer boat rides lasting for hours, replete with skiers chasing daylight for as long as they could, riding on their heels into the setting of the sun.
If the fish were biting, or the crabs were calling, we’d meander to the boathouse to throw out a line, or, wander to the edge of the pier to set a trap or two, languishing in the quietude until dusk, when the cicadas came out to sing their songs of the bayou.
This was our world before August of 2005, when our excursions to the town of Slidell were more frequent, and the days much slower.
These days, we drive in from our far away home in Nashville - a 500 mile trek to South Louisiana. Hurriedly, we make our round of visits with family, while occasionally stealing away moments of respite with friends.
When we do, it all becomes second nature…
We’ve been here before - the place where time stops and the hours are long enough to settle into the boat for a ride down the bayou, upon the waters that know us by heart.
We linger for awhile on the lake, to watch the ever-changing colors of the sky, riding back to the camp just in time to catch the moon’s glow on the waves of a turning tide.
As the darkness begins to settle, we gather at the end of the outstretched pier, searching for stars in the night sky.
Our voices lilting across well chartered waters, as we reminisce the years, until the next time we meet again… in between the lake and the bayou, we will always call home.
Taken from “Coming Home” series, a collection of stories
by Laura M Mehaffey