The first thing you forget when you leave the Gulf Coast, where I grew up, is the humidity. It is also the first thing you are reminded of when you come home. When I got the call that I was to pack up and head out to New Orleans I loaded my bags with long sleeve shirts and ties, the uniform of DC. I am drenched just sitting here, and my coaster doesn’t stand a chance against the sweating glass of ice water. My ties are not going to see the light of day.
I spent the better part of my youth on a different bayou, one ostensibly tamed by concrete and steel. The truth is, the climate, the mosquitos, the Gulf...they’ve been around long enough to not be fooled by a few office buildings or air conditioned rest stops. Whether you are from Houston (like me), New Orleans, Mobile, or Pensacola, you feel a kinship with your fellow bayou dwellers - we are a special breed who chooses to live in generally unbearable conditions for 9 months of the year.
New Orleans is buzzing tonight. Jazzfest is in it’s final days and people are tired from the 7 days of festivities, but it is still the talk of the town. Here in my hotel in Houma, the buzz is different. The bar is stacked shoulder to shoulder with men in shirts with faded screen print that reads "EPA", "Coast Guard", "DEQ", and "NRC". They are mostly silent as CNN reports the progress of the reach of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The oil is almost here, and the way the wind is blowing you can bet it’ll be here soon. It is clear that CNN isn’t telling them anything they don’t already know.
I’ve seen this scene before, at hotel bars in Utah and Arizona, where wildfire fighters from around the country have come to do everything in their power to mitigate the disaster at hand without concern about who is to blame. These men at the bar tonight are fresh, they’ve only just arrived on the scene from all over the country. In that way they are like my fellow bayou dwellers, in it together, for better or worse.
The pictures of oil covered wildlife are making the rounds, and when I mention to my waitress the tendrils of oil making their way inland she sighs and asks, "How much more can we take?" It is the question, it seems to me, we should all be asking our leaders who support a policy of addiction to the fuel of the past.
I am steeling myself for the things I will see here on the coast, in the Gulf that taught me to swim, surf, and fish. I suppose there is no better inoculation than the damp night air and the sound of the bayou.