Starting Anew

  Storms ravage the Bayou every few years.  Usually, the damage is minimal and we go on about our lives with just a quick cleanup.  Other times, the storm will batter the area and bring great destruction. During those storms, our trees take a beating.  Fifteen years ago, Hurricane Katrina took over a hundred of our trees many of which were here when I was a child.  The place looked barren.  I remember talking with my (then future) daughter-in-law on the phone several weeks after that hurricane.  I was exhausted but that sweet girl kept me going.  She would call from Tennessee every day.   To her, I could bemoan the losses, talk about the destruction and heal with her kind words.  In one of our conversations, I told her how many trees were lost and how the ones still standing were devoid of leaves.  It had saddened me to no end.  Then a few weeks later, it was during one of our phone calls that I spied the first new leaf budding out on a tree.  ""Oh, Joanna!" I literally screamed into the phone before I started weeping uncontrollably.  This caused her great concern.  "What??  What is wrong?  How can I help you?" she quickly asked.  When I finally could blurt out about the new leaf, she wept with me.  We wept with pure joy.  Life was returning to the Bayou.

  Now, fifteen years later, life is still slowly rebuilding.  This afternoon, I slipped on my moccasins and proceeded to walk the shoreline.  There was a bit of a drizzly rain which kept me from fully enjoying the hike but I kept going.  As I pushed my way passed the wild persimmon trees and through some of the thick palmetto clumps, a sight literally took my breath away.  I nigh on started crying with joy again.  The Bayou is healing itself.  The setting sun cast a few rays of light upon a beautiful magnolia sapling.  The little tree stood there in all its glory just waiting to be discovered.  

  I now have a new project in mind.  Even though the little sapling sits far down the hill (almost in the marsh edge), I have a plan to clear the vines and underbrush from around it.  The little tree deserves a fighting chance at survival.  Hopefully, with a little tender-loving care and a bit of fertilizer, the tree can grow strong and withstand any future storms.  Yes, this is fifteen years after the storm and yes, the Bayou should be regrowing by this time but I look at each new tree as a blessing and will treat it as such.  These things are as much a part of my healing as it is the Bayou's.  I need it.  It takes time...sometimes a lifetime.