I grew up in the busy city of New Orleans and the surrounding cities. I loved it. There was always something happening and it was always active with energy.
My parents and I would frequent the French Quarter and Downtown on weekends to walk around, eat and visit the aquarium. I enjoyed being in a busy city, it was alluring in a sense.
Hearing music, cars and people chattering made me happy. It may have been because I was very young and didn’t go out that much, but I absolutely adored it.
So I was very surprised when I recently visited Downtown New Orleans and I no longer liked it.
I hated the sounds, people brushing past me, traffic jams and sketchy parking situations. It was like my senses were being overwhelmed the entire time I was there.
And I think I know why I suddenly feel like this. I moved away from New Orleans when I was about 11 but my family and I still frequented it to visit family and friends. So I was always around exploring the city.
But when those people moved out of New Orleans and my parents no longer had a reason to go down often, we just didn’t go anymore. I focused on graduating high school, doing college, and navigating young adult life.
I couldn’t make time, or a good enough reason, to take an entire day to visit Downtown New Orleans anymore. At the time I didn’t think it was a bad thing, life was just busy and I was always going to love my city.
Clearly, I grew to like living in the bottom of the boot. The Dulac area is extremely quiet compared to New Orleans. I traded running around the French Quarter for running across levees and fishing.
That was the most Dulacian sentence I’ve ever written, but it’s true. Even now that I mainly stay in Lafayette, I miss spending an evening sitting on whatever piece of wood or rock that looked like it wouldn’t hurt too bad and fish away.
Well I would attempt to fish and then get my hook stuck on a mysterious object and annoy my dad too many times. Now, I just hand him bait and watch for curious gators. But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it any less.
The entirety of down the Bayou is very quiet. The most noise I will hear is a boat’s engine or a hunter’s gun going off. Cars do pass by on the roads but not nearly as often as in a busy city like New Orleans. The slow bayou life grew on me.
I don’t have to share walls with my neighbors, I don’t even have to share a yard.
In the back of my parent’s house, there is a large portion of government land that separates them from the rest of the neighbors.
I rarely hear my neighbors if they have loud music or a large party, because they are a good distance away. When my parents lived in a townhouse apartment in New Orleans, we couldn’t have guests over much less celebrate a birthday.
Another major difference is the scenery. New Orleans is crawling with tall buildings, to the point where you can be on a bridge and you would still have a tall building blocking the skyline.
The bayou area has a few hundred houses and then it is just trees, grass and bayous for miles.
There is this one specific part of Dulac that I like, it’s called the Bayou Sale (pronounced Sally) Road. It is a long stretch of winding road that connects Dulac to Cocodrie but there are no stores or houses on the road.
It is surrounded on either side by Lake Quitman and Bayou Dulac. It almost feels surreal and eerie because for 8 miles all you can see is trees, grass and water. You do eventually come back into contact with humans.
Living a few years in the quiet little paradise does make you appreciate the slow bayou life. After a busy day at work, sometimes all you want is some peace and quiet.
Maybe when I am older and I start working in a large city I’ll learn to like it again. But for now, I’ll stick with bayous and levees.