Yet the choices of where we can go aren't entirely his. Everything we do here is controlled by the tides. Today the water level is below normal, so old bayous will be too shallow to navigate. Barnes' route combines canals and trenaises, and our put-in is at Twin Canals. Clouds of green duckweed coat the water.
Spoil banks host thick hardwoods.
An ichthyologist, Barnes never goes anywhere without a fish-sampling net. He pauses every third or fourth stroke to see what's under the surface. There's so much in these wetlands, it's hard to imagine. Soon, we are immersed. Turtles sun on logs, bream slap at dragonflies, and a great blue heron swoops across the canal and vanishes into a cypress-tupelo swamp behind the spoil levee.