Discover the swampy sphere of Jean Lafitte

The pirate Jean Lafitte was rather notorious across Southeast Louisiana in the 19th century, having established a smuggling empire in Barataria Bay so that he and his brigands could move fancy merchandise and African slaves past American ships. President Thomas Jefferson's response to French and British interference during the Napoleonic Wars was a trade embargo, which, of course, proved grossly unfair to New Orleans' Creoles. Thus, Lafitte became a trusted source for hotly desired goods such as cognac and escargot, mostly commandeered off passing ships.

But this is not the point of my blog post. No matter how colonists regarded Lafitte at the time and despite that the pirate helped Gen. Andrew Jackson defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans, Louisiana's park service has since named six separate historic sites for him, all in the swampy regions near the Gulf Coast, including Barataria Preserve just a short drive south of New Orleans.

While I am leading tourists around the French Quarter, as I often do, I always make a point of discussing geography. This, to make the point that our coastline is slowly creeping closer and the land on which the city is built is subsiding, or in other words, sinking. But even as Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville founded New Orleans more than 300 years ago, the practicality of the site was questioned. Then, as now, New Orleans is essentially an island only 15 feet above sea level, subject to floods and hurricanes. Yet Bienville had his reasons.

That given, we we travelers now have the opportunity to experience swamps similar to those traversed by Lafitte, just a 30-minute drive across the Mississippi over the Crescent City Connection. Heading towards Marrero on the West Bank, the scenery quickly turns to dense vegetation: Cypress trees, palmettos, and grasses in the watery marsh. Lafitte Preserve is also home to 200 bird species, as well as countless alligators.

I usually walk the one-mile Palmetto Trail, which starts on the south side of Highway 45 at the visitor center, currently open only Friday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Palmetto Trail follows a boardwalk over the swamp. Learning materials about plants and animals are available online to make visiting with children more educational. Several other trails, including the Bayou Coquille Trail, which starts in a prehistoric, Native American midden filled with discarded clamshells, bisects tropical wetlands, takes you through an abandoned oilfield road and ends at a 19th-century canal. A couple of years ago, a protective mother alligator made this trail frighteningly impassible, but I believe she has gratefully returned to her home in nearby Bayou Segnette.

Old Barataria Trail is a remnant of the public road built by the Spanish colonial government. The Spanish called it El Camino Real de Barataria, the royal road of Barataria. It was known to the French as Le Chemin de Barataria. The word Barataria comes from Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel Don Quixote de La Mancha. Don Quixote’s companion Sancho Panza was made governor of an island called Barataria. In the old Provençal language, barataria means fraud. Sancho Panza’s island was land-locked, therefore, a fake island. Isle Barataria was high in elevation, but not completely surrounded by water. Barataria was later used as the name for a nearby bayou, the bay where it drains, and eventually the entire region.

An audio tour, narrating seven stops on the Coquille trail is available by calling 504-799-0802 on your cell. A map posted online lists several other open trails

A decade ago, a South American university president was lost for four days in Jean Lafitte Preserve while in pursuit of a Wood duck. At the time, I thought that impossible since my perception of the park was it was not very large. But driving without GPS, I got turned around and realized the 26,000-acre Jean Lafitte Park and Preserve on New Orleans’ West Bank is a lot bigger than I had imagined! This trip, I chose to walk trails on the north side of Highway 45. It is in this area, I believe, where Sr. Francisco Piedrahita got off the trail. Let that be a lesson.

I learned from turning off the highway at Christmas Road and venturing into Pecan Grove, where in 1779, Gov. Bernardo de Galvez settled farmers and fishermen from the Canary Islands, known as Islenos. Fifty-six families were brought to live along Bayou des Families to help protect New Orleans from a possible British Invasion. French remained the dominant language of Louisiana even under Spanish control. Flooding from the Mississippi River, however, forced most to relocate just three years later, reminding us we are still on low land.