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No Snapshot, Just A Photo
Topic Started: Jan 13 2005, 10:25 AM (231 Views)
Lon Frank
Member
http://www.texanempire.com/pictures.htm

OK, for all you folks who wonder just what the bayou looks like, here's a photo I took from the dock, back in the early fall. The sky was unusually clear and there was a full moon just rising early in the evening. The view is due east, and downstream towards the large bay leading to the Gulf.

The light was failing, but you may be able to make out the old channel, just off to the left, as it makes a little loop, isolating the big clump of trees on a little island. The photo makes it all look bigger somehow, perhaps because everything was so still, but the bridge in the distance is only about 300 feet long. I have been able to sit here almost everyday this year, with only a few days too cold or rainy to fish. This morning early it was calm and cool, but soon the west wind picked up and brought the chill from a cold front that is coming for the weekend. We sat for about an hour, just wasting time and listening to the geese that are milling about in the changing skies.

By now, the yard birds are making a last run at the feeders, and getting ready to hunker down for a few days of winter, such as it is down here on the coast. It was 73F yesterday, and now is dropping into the 40's. Still not bad, but add a 30 MPH wind, and it does tend to chill the back of my neck, and the fish weren't interested in playing anyway.

Of course, no matter the weather, fishdog Katy always goes along, her heavy corgi fur keeping the chill from even her 15 year old doggy bones. But Jazzy, that sissy, makes a brave showing then sneaks away to watch from inside the big windows in my office. I think that for today, I'll watch from here as well.

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sylley2000
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Sylvia, Grand Bend ON
Posted Image

Great pic Lon--looks very inviting. One of these days you'll get the hang of right clicking and copying the image location to the clipboard, pasting it, and adding img tags, but I'm in no hurry for you to learn how to do that because then you'd want to know how to resize your pics. L0L

Sylvia
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mychrissy
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Chrissy
Beautiful photo, it looks like the sky is touching the water.
Chrissy

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Lon Frank
Member
Sylvia, actually several talented folks have taught me through the years how to post photos, links, gifs and such, but I am proud to report that I have reached that stage of life where I forgets faster than I learns.

Besides, some kind soul always taked pity on me, and does all that hard stuff anyway. ;)


I've been absent from the forum for quite a while, and I just wanted to let you guys know that I've been busy fishing, not been just goofing off.

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jackd
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Member
Beautiful picture
For me, the bayou has always represented something with magnetism, mystery and as being a frightening but peacefull place at the same time. Don't know why or where it comes from. Maybe in a previous life.........
Kepp the pic. coming.
Walk in front of me, you lead me,
Walk behind me, I lead you
Walk beside me, you are a friend.
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cmoehle
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Chris - San Antonio TX
Looks like a Rochard test, so perhaps a chess bishop taking a nap.


Kidding, beautiful sunset on the bayou, Lon. :)
Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
--Barry Goldwater
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Lon Frank
Member
Jackd, the bayou country is beautiful. But, the folks who live along the water learn to respect it as a wild living thing:

-----

In the backs of coves and the shallow places, nutria sit motionless atop the low mounds of their dens like furry Russian hats, surrounded by the curly brownness of frost-wilted hyacinths. Their rodent faces burrowed between front paws, they soak in the early warmth of a brilliant and cloudless January morning. Tiny, dark eyes sparkle like wave ripples as they watch the boats crisscrossing the still-dark waters of the bayou.

Grim faced men throttle their motors slowly and pass a silent signal to one another, one hand clutching the heavy line trailing over the gunnel. They shield their faces from the rising sun, the early light accentuating the hollows of fatigue, their eyes reflecting both the hope and dread of their success. No words break the stillness, no shouts of fishermen, no hurrahs of victory in their contest with the water.

The task of the boatmen has stretched into it’s second day and people come to gather at the little house, aunts and uncles joining the mother in her bank-side vigil, pacing and weeping as hope escapes them like the mists rising under the ancient cypress. A band of children, cousins and friends, draws together in silent bewilderment at the sudden confrontation of their own mortality. Babies are held and hushed by neighbor ladies who have appeared laden with covered dishes of fried chicken, cold shrimp salads or crockery bowls of baked beans, swirled with the spices of recipes handed down to generations of low country daughters. The food is laid out on tables in the yard, so that no one, even in eating, would be compelled to take their eyes from the black water curling away towards the great flat marshes and the salty gulf beyond, or from the boats swirling like fallen leaves upon it’s surface. At the near spit of land, the winter bare limbs of willows droop wearily as if to add their groping tendrils to the morning’s search, their rustlings, muted as graveside whispers.

At last, the boats come together at the curve of an ancient ox-bow channel, and a message comes silently across the water that the search is at an end. Rope-roughened hands of the boatmen, some wearing workmen’s clothes, some in the brown uniforms of game wardens, lift the body into waiting blankets, each man marveling privately at the cold and heaviness of their burden. Much too heavy for one so young, much too cold for the ease of their souls.

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pentax
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Kamloops - BC Interior
sylley2000
Jan 13 2005, 08:47 AM

Great pic Lon--looks very inviting. One of these days you'll get the hang of right clicking and copying the image location to the clipboard, pasting it, and adding img tags, but I'm in no hurry for you to learn how to do that because then you'd want to know how to resize your pics. L0L

Sylvia

Have you told Lon about ImageShack, Syl?

Once you tipped me to that, I thought; "Man! This is just too darn easy!"
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(thumbnail)

Posted Image

"Kirk to Enterprise - Very funny, Scotty.... now beam down my clothes!"
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Trailblazer
Member
Hello, Lon. We've been in Louisiana for about 5 weeks now, and every time we are here, we fall in love with this state all over again.

Last year we were fishing in a bayou in the Shafly, and I fell in! We've been out on the bayous in a john boat, and I still can't believe people here water ski with the alligators in the water!! We sold our canoe here last year, because I didn't want to tip over from anyone's wake, and end up in the water with the alligators.

Beautiful picture. That is why we love Lousiana.
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hudsonnut
Member
Lon, I always enjoy your writing. As I read, I can imagine sitting and watching the thing you describe. I salute your talent! :tiphat:
Chuck
Chuck & Sandy
Spike the dog
'88Mallard Sprinter 31'
'01 Honda CRV Toad
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Lon Frank
Member
Thanks, Chuck! I'm always honored when someone enjoys my stories or word snapshots.
Actually, the story above was taken from exactly the same scene as the photograph, and was real, just a year ago.

The stories of our places are fascinating to me; they add a depth of human history to the scene, whether lovely or not. In my long relationship with the bayou country, the stories have maintained the tension in my love affair. The bayou is my temptress, a flirt who whispers me to bed each night and is waiting for me as I awake each morning. She smells of sensual earthy musk, or makes me giddy with early spring flowers. She rages at me with dark fits of rage, or wraps me in the incredible intimacy of her misty solitude. I sometines spend days with no other conversation but hers, and miss her like the embrace of a lover when I'm away.

But I always remember that mine is a one-sided infatuation; she goes on without me, with an age and youth, both I can never comprehend. When I'm gone from her side, she'll not miss me, not mourn for me. She'll pay no homage when my ashes swirl within her dark waters like the wilted hyacinths of winter.


And Blazer, you be careful over in the Shaffly. The old folks down there tell of things more ancient than gators! When I close my eyes sometimes and think of beauty, I see the Shaffly swamp.
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