Wet, wild and free

We sat in separate cars, scattered around the grocery store parking lot. It was the second day of April, and the weather was still crisp in the morning, the sky cloudless. We had our windows down and were anxious. We’d been told to watch for a pick up truck towing a bunch of canoes. It would lead us to the heart of the bayou.

We double checked our equipment and slathered on sunscreen. I thought of bringing my machete. There would be snakes. My buddy brought two sandwiches and a 35mm camera with a few rolls of black-and-white film—ancient stuff for an ancient place.

The truck arrived, and our guide stepped out. He was thin and fit, a bit scruffy and gray. I snapped a picture of him paparazzi-style. He was famous, after all, known to some as Cactus Clyde, a legendary presence in the swamps of Louisiana.

I knew him only as C.C. Lockwood, the best wildlife photographer I’d ever seen.

There was a gaggle of us there to meet him: all lawyers and teachers by day, amateur shutterbugs by night. We had come in from places like Monroe and Bunkie, one guy from as far as Chicago. It all had the feel of a pilgrimage, this chance to worship the bayou with Lockwood. Luckily, he was approachable, just a nondescript fellow in blue jeans.

You couldn’t even tell, just by looking at him, that he’d spent most of his life in wild places. Or maybe it’s that we get so used to it in Louisiana—the look of an outdoorsman—that it’s hard to distinguish degrees. This makes sense in a place where nearly everyone has lived through a hurricane. Nearly everyone has gutted a catfish. Nearly everyone has paddled a boat.

That was our plan, too.

So, with six cars and five canoes, we rattled toward Bayou Sorrell.

If you’re not familiar with Lockwood’s work, all you need to do is look around. Anytime you are anywhere in Louisiana—restaurants, doctor’s offices, the living rooms of generous people—you are likely to see it. Maybe sitting on the table in front of you, right now, is the cover of one of his books: a crushing Atchafalaya sunset, hanging Spanish moss, an egret preening her plume, an alligator staring right at you.

Since the 1970s, C.C. Lockwood’s photos have defined our great state. If you don’t believe me, ask anybody.

Start with the stranger we saw at the gas station.

He approached as we were standing outside, our last pit stop before hitting the water, and he looked like a hard-working man. “Mr. Lockwood?” he asked, and reached out to shake Lockwood’s hand. “I’ve seen you on LPB. I just really wanted to meet you.”

Quick: Name three photographers you would recognize on the street.

That’s my point.

C.C. Lockwood is important to this community. His decades of photographing the Atchafalaya Basin, speaking about it and trying to save it from development and destruction have left their mark. He’s a man, for good reason, that people around here want to thank.

After we unpacked our gear at the boat dock, a line of canoes at the ready, Lockwood’s instructions were brief. “This is the Upper Grand River,” he said. “Move your paddle this way, like a J, if you want to turn.” We loaded our boats with waterproof camera bags, some as complicated as CIA briefcases, and pushed off. The first thing I saw was a snake, cruising across the channel in front of me. I used my paddle like a J, to quickly move us in the other direction.

You have to understand, snakes are my enemies. They terrify me. When I cut the grass, I think of them. When I fish for bass, I stay away from the trees. Even if I’m at the zoo, I can’t stomach it, the way they slither behind walls of glass. Blame the Book of Genesis, maybe. Blame Indiana Jones. Just don’t say they are more afraid of me. Impossible.

“Another thing,” Lockwood warned as we started upriver, “if you get a good glimpse at some wildlife, put your fist in the air. Don’t shout. The first person to see it gets the shot. Don’t crowd around. You don’t want to corner a gator.”

This made sense.

So, we paddled and scouted. We felt ready for anything.

Lockwood leads excursions like these about four times a year. The instruction he gives his students is practical, like what lens to use and when, how to position your body in cramped spaces, how to get the perfect shot. The students get into it, swapping lenses like experts, framing up the horizon.

This is joyful to do when you drift with the current. The clicks and whirs of expensive cameras blend in with the sounds of blackbirds and frogs. We let nothing that lived go undocumented. Our final destination was a lake that Lockwood said would be chock-full of wildlife. The problem, though, was a glut of water hyacinth that had grown all around it. We paddled until our canoes felt beached.

“None of this was even here four months ago,” Lockwood said. “This stuff is a problem. Pretty soon, it won’t matter what kind of boat you have. You won’t be able to cross it.”

It’s no surprise that Lockwood has seen changes out here, the proliferation of water hyacinth, nutria, alligator weed and other invasive species among them. He’s seen positive changes, too, like witnessing 40 years of cypress growth. Young sprigs that were mere saplings when Lockwood loaded his first roll of film are now tall and fat, their muscular trunks stuck deep in the muck. More than this, though, Lockwood has seen changes in the people around the basin, especially a new reluctance to litter.

“When I first started coming out here,” Lockwood told us, “families would dump their weekly garbage in the water. Nobody thought twice about it.”

“What’s changed?” I asked him. “Why do you think it’s gotten better?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and looked at something through his camera. “Just awareness, I guess.”

Then, Lockwood told us a story:

“When I was young,” he said, “my family was driving through California. I saw a car with a bumper sticker on it that said ‘Save the Big Thicket!’ I had no idea what it was talking about. Save it from what? I wondered.” Lockwood leaned over and focused his lens on a colony of ants, bizarrely stationed on an isolated cypress stump. “It wasn’t until I got a little bit older that I understood what we were doing to this planet.”

This is when it broke on me, the huge difference between C.C. Lockwood and myself, between Lockwood and most people.

When something like a snake scares me, I panic. I run.

When Lockwood was a young man, barely in his 20s, he also came across his worst fear, that of a planet stripped of its nature, of wildlife starved for a habitat, of creatures gone extinct for a strip mall. In the face of this fear, Lockwood did the opposite of what most of us would. Instead of running away or ignoring it, he dug in.

He spent the next 40 years of his life photographing the Atchafalaya Basin, a place he knew needed saving. He studied it in every attitude you can imagine, sunny and still, crawling and peaceful, and he showed it to us. He showed it to the world.

“They say we don’t have seasons in Louisiana,” Lockwood told us, “but we have seasons in the basin. Every time you come out here, it’s different. That’s what we have to preserve. We have to keep the basin wet, wild and free.”

Nowadays, people are trying.

Yet, if you ask C.C. Lockwood why it’s working, why there is less litter now than there used to be, why regular people are paying attention, he will never state the obvious. He won’t admit that he helped create this awareness—that his beautiful photos are saving this place.

Instead, he will continue paddling the bayous to get that next perfect shot. Or, he will do like he did with our group and hop out of the water to stand on the levee just before the sun went down. He will crawl on his belly to catch the open faces of wildflowers as they bask like tourists in that last blast of sun.

“I’ve always loved the evening primrose,” he told us. “I like to get down on their level.”

I guess that was another thing he taught us that day.

If you want your work to mean something, you first have to choose the right angle.

M.O. Walsh is an LSU creative writing instructor and author of the short story collection The Prospect of Magic. To read more of his work, visit mowalsh.com.