Texas Report #2: The flight back

[muckefuck]

Seeing bitterlawngnome's most recent photos (check this guy out--he has a good camera and a good eye) reminded me of something I saw in Louisiana yesterday. (As implied by a previous subject line, I flew back from Houston by way of Jackson, MS.) The terrain was forested, but marked with a lot of small man-made clearings. For a while, these clearings came in small clusters. You would see a windy dirt road clearly delineated in the reddish soil that would branch out into several short, smaller roads. Each ran down the middle of a small, irregular, oblong clearing like the vein on a leaf.

I couldn't see any sign of cultivation in these clearings. The vegetation was very pale, almost whitish. At least two of them were on fire. It was very odd seeing smoke billow from 30,000 feet. The humid air must've been very still, since it hardly seemed to move at all. I had the sensation of seeing particles suspended in a heavy, syrupy solution or cotton batting affixed to an HO-scale train set.

I thought of the controlled burns used to maintain small prairies in Midwestern state parks. But it didn't look like parkland and, even if it were, why have oodles of tiny clearings instead of one large prairie that would have much greater diversity of fauna? I asked myself, Is slash-and-burn agriculture still practiced in this country?

After that, we flew parallel to the Mississippi for a while. I love seeing all the the curves, sandbars, and oxbow lakes. One small town was situated on the outer edge of a darker area of vegetation shaped like an oxbow that had long ago silted up. I wondered if, when the town had been founded, it had originally been on the river but, like Augusta, Missouri, been stranded a mile away when the treacherous waters changed course. Another was protected by levees that recalled the defensive earthworks of Vauban.

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

I thought of the controlled burns used to maintain small prairies in Midwestern state parks. But it didn't look like parkland and, even if it were, why have oodles of tiny clearings instead of one large prairie that would have much greater diversity of fauna? I asked myself, Is slash-and-burn agriculture still practiced in this country?

Could it have been kudzu? Lots of folks use fire to try to control it.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Okay, so now you have a clearing in the woods totally free of kudzu. What next?

[bunj.livejournal.com]

Okay, so now you have a clearing in the woods totally free of kudzu. What next?

Miller time. You managed to completely clear away some kudzu. You're a hero.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

MGD does seem to be the beer of choice down there. I overheard the flight attendant trying to talk a passenger into trying an Amstel Light. "It tastes like beer," she said, "Miller Light and Bud Light are so weak they don't taste like anything."

He listen politely and then ordered a Miller Light.

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

At the risk of extreme pedantry I think you mean Jackson, MS, since MI is Michigan.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I thank you for your pedantry; the appropriate corrections have been made.

Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of!
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of!