Will It Ever Be The Same?

Photo Gallery: Along Katrina's Path

ON THE HONEY ISLAND SWAMP, La. This is the place to hear a story, out among the cypress and sugar-gum trees and brackish waste-deep water you don't want to fall into, where the nutrias grow to 8 pounds and the gators are named after long-gone Louisiana politicians.

Grab a cold Abita Beer out of the blue cooler that says "NOT FOR FISH," take a hard seat in the Army-green flat-bottom boat, and let Neil Benson, the 29-year-old owner of Pearl River Eco-Tours, share the legends that bubble from the belly of this swamp.

A Barnum & Bailey Circus train crashed in the woods here years ago, he'll tell you, and some sort of webfooted gorilla-man must have escaped because hunters spot the Honey Island Swamp Monster every year, prowling in the marshes of the Pearl River delta.

Benson has a footprint cast. It was the only thing evacuated from the eco-tour gift shop on the bank as Hurricane Katrina bore down.

On a hot afternoon, in his first effort to navigate the delta since the storm, Benson isn't saying much about monsters or swamp king Pierre Rameaux and the Screech Owls or the reddish ghosts of pirate Jean Lafitte's slain henchmen.

"This is unbelievable," he says, pushing his boat through dead trees and thick mud. "For the life of me, I would have never guessed it. It's gone. All of it."

The swamp looks as if it was stirred with a giant spoon. Chunks of mud and ancient trees were uprooted by the hurricane and tossed around like chicken bones. There are lakes where marsh grass once grew thick and green, and mud where water stood 6 feet deep.

The saltwater that surged in from the Gulf has wasted hundreds of acres of freshwater flora, which is already brown and dry. Houseboats are strewn asunder. Look, a refrigerator, and over there, a tractor tire.

The wildlife has all but disappeared as well, save a few wild hogs, some coastal wading birds and what is perhaps the best indicator of the condition of the swamp.

"Vultures," says Benson.

"Lots of vultures," says his friend, Bob Owen.

Much has been written about storm-ravaged Gulf Coast cities: Biloxi, Gulfport, New Orleans. But the devastation here has gone mostly unnoticed. Many boat launches on the lower swamp are impassable, and flyovers so far have been for other business; helicopters are still searching for at least one man who braved the storm in a rickety houseboat and is believed to be missing somewhere on the bayou in a rescue pod.

But neglect is nothing new in a place where secrets abound.

"Everybody here is running from something," Benson said. "The law or themselves. Those voices in their heads."

Environmentalists have been talking for years about the possible effects that damage to the coastal lands would have should a hurricane cut the right course. Minus the miles of grasslands and barrier reefs that have been fading for years, Gulf Coast cities are vulnerable. But the urgings of scientists and politicians have fallen on deaf federal ears.

"They're constantly turning their backs on the erosion of our coastal lands," Benson says, "and now it's gonna bank the country."

But somehow the problem here seems more desperate than other places. Casinos can be rebuilt. New Orleans most likely will rise again. The small towns sprinkled along the coast will bloom from the sweat of the hard people who refuse to leave.

What about the swamp?

"Homes and things like that can be repaired," Benson says. "This can't."

Benson grew his tour company from one employee and a boat three years ago to 13 employees and four boats. After the storm, he told his workers and creditors he'd pay them when he could. That may be a long time.

Even if the bayous were navigable, who would want to ride a tour boat through this?

"Maybe I can work construction," he says.

One thing is certain, for now at least. Gone are the afternoons spent tossing marshmallows to hungry alligators and watching New Orleans tourists gawk. Gone are the patrols by the Confederate Navy, a band of neighboring swamp soldiers wearing rebel tattoos, cutoff jeans and shoulder holsters. Gone is the Port Hole, the bar to which Owen and some buddies offered an ironic and final hurricane toast the night before it was torn to shreds.

"Our whole economy is lost," says Owen of the White Kitchen region in St. Tammany Parish. "Every job is lost; every company is ruined."

This is not just about business. "We grew up here," he says. "That's probably the worst part."

"It's an ..."

Benson catches himself.

"It was an interesting place. I just don't know how you correct something like this."

What has vanished will be difficult to calculate.

The Army Corps of Engineers may someday put a number on the acres destroyed and determine the impact on the egret population, but how can you measure the dislodgement of a culture, and of the stories that have been whispered through this swamp for decades?

Perhaps we can begin when the swamp turns green again, when the tour companies return, when the next nameless hunter runs breathless into a stilted fishing camp shouting about a webfooted gorilla-man.