The Backwoods: A Louisiana Levee Check Turns Into Something Else

The narrator's family property in Louisiana sits on 57 acres protected by a seventy-year-old ramshackle levee bordering a small stream. Without it, their house would be surrounded by an impromptu lake every time it rains. After every storm, someone has to hike the muddy trail to check the levee for damage. This time, the narrator put it off until after an early supper, heading out around 4 PM with maybe ninety minutes of daylight left. What should have been a routine thirty-minute walk turned into something that did not follow the normal rules of the woods.

The Landscape and Its Normal Weirdness

The Louisiana woods the narrator describes are not a pleasant forest. They are thick with poison ivy, boars, deer, and "metric tons of the stuff" — mud on every trail, every foot, everywhere. The property contains the usual rural debris: old sheds no one ever used, car seats miles from the nearest road, piles of sheet metal and tire rims. Occasionally storms uncover old water wells or, as the narrator puts it, "the remains of some poor family stray tramp." The levee itself is a piece of "redneck engineering" that works, keeping the family from drowning in swamp water whenever the creek floods.