It was a fitting end to my time in Texas: a long struggle to reach the state line. Under grey skies with the wind blowing into my face, I paid dear for every yard to finally leave the Lone Star State.
The evening was drawing in as I crossed the Sabine river and entered Louisiana.I was disappointed there was no sign to welcome new arrivals. However a fellow enthusiast had vandalized the 1 mile marker ' Welcome to Louisiana...Yay!'.
Swamps lined the roadside, home to hardwood trees of many kinds. Tall cypresses stood with their feet in the stagnant pools, muddy creeks wound between islands thick with trees and undergrowth. Put this sub-tropical hardwood forest in a more 'exotic' country and it would no doubt be called jungle.
I doubted it would be possible to walk into the swamps and string up a hammock without sinking into the soggy ground. There is also a dark and foreboding air to the waterlogged Louisiana woods. I was in two minds as to whether I wanted to spend the night there.
I thought perhaps a night in a campsite would give me an insight into the attitudes of this state, a good basis for deciding where to stay in the future. I pressed on to the town of Merryville, only to find the campsite was closed.
With 20 miles to the next town and the light fading I hurried out of Merryville to search for a place to crash. I turned down a side road signposted to an evangelical church with a very long name and wandered into the commercial pine forest that surrounds it.
These pine woods had a spooky atmosphere all of their own. Mists drifted between the trees as I cooked my dinner at dusk. With the humidity rising, darkness brought the call of hundreds unseen frogs ringing out into the night sky.
In bed by seven, I settled in and waited for the storm to break.
A surprising number of cars were turning down the dead end road. I had not expected an out of town Baptist Church to be so busy on a Friday night.
Paranoia started to play on my mind. Had someone spotted me sneaking into the woods? Were they congregating to decide what to do? Would a group of angry locals be heading in to find me with bloodhounds, shotguns and flashlights? Was I to be a the centre of an old fashioned lynching?
Of course not, I assured myself, imagination was getting carried away again. I was scared of the unknown I suppose, or of the picture painted of the Deep South the media.
Perhaps I'd spent too much time on my own. The mind can come up with all kinds of crazy rubbish when it has no first hand knowledge.
If 'ignorance is bliss', as they say, then 'prejudice is fear'.
What I needed was to meet some people here, to get a feel for the Deep South region.
It is reputably the most distinct and separate culture in the lower 48.
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