Travelogue: East Texas / Northwest Louisiana

The initial contrast is a bit jarring – derricks and refineries should be creatures of the plains, not the great forest primeval of this wet place. The Delta may have been devastated, but the North of the state has seen nothing but windfall from an energy-starved world. Yes . . . but . . . the trees. The trees. Wall after wall of impenetrable shafts sixty and eighty feet high. As a son of the prairie it’s claustrophobic. There is no horizon in this place, no way to know what’s up ahead, no sense of your place in the larger world. This the home of the world-cowing nuclear bomber base; the unsuspecting populace accidentally stumbling their way through global power. Here is another slice of the infinite internal campagna that funds and fuels and creates the Great American Hegemony Machine. The world is conquered in such a small way; a treasured paycheck and a tiny clapboard house. You can keep your trees, and your river, and your casinos crassly clustered at waters’ edge. I’d rather be able to see my future coming.