Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp (17)

Title: Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp
Author: Gwen Roland
Genre: Memoir

This memoir tells a story about the kind of people I dream about knowing and becoming like. People who live by choice in near complete isolation in a swamp where they live and make their living on the water and the land. They tend gardens and chickens, collect rain water to drink, bathe in the river, nap in the sun, swim naked in the intense Southern heat. They trade and barter fish and vegetables and labor for other goods instead of only surviving in a currency economy. They listen to Robert Frost tell stories on a tape while they construct their houseboat from recycled materials. They write poetry about the seasons and the stars. They read books and stories for their own deep pleasure and aloud for entertainment. They welcome artists and writers to their home and the serenity of the swamp. They live alone without lonliness and commune with friends wihtout being bound within a community of homes.

For nearly a decade the writer and her then companion lived in the swamp and lived totally on their own terms. They survived and prospered by the work of their hands and minds. They grew their own food, nurtured culture and knowledge within themselves and put nothing but goodness into the world. I envy them.

I loved this book and the fact that these two lived this kind of life. Even though their relationship ended and they keft their swamp utopia it heartens me to know that at least it existed for a while. It also makes me want to buy my grandmother's farm from my father and build a farmhouse of my dreams there. I'll milk my cows, make my own cheese, grow organic vegetables in the rich Kentucky soil, watch the sun set over my back pond and let the breeze blow through my long hair as I sit in the porch swing. I'll grow into an old, fat happy Southern woman and it will be good. If only that could be my world even for a little while.