SLSL "TSR" swamp

[pynchonoid]

somebody:
>As for Southern Louisiana, especially a bayou-land
>ever 
>resembling a
>desert, that would take a LOT of imagination.

Well, there's the sand beach at Lake Pontchartrain,
for starters, turn your back on the water and it's a
sand desert (I've got pictures of myself playing on
that beach as a toddler), and there's plenty of
red-dirt scrub land elsewhere; it takes no imagination
at all to find dry, sandy terrain in southwest
Louisiana, it's not all swamp and bayou -- especially
not on an Army base where they keep it all scraped
back to dirt, use sand to outline paths and create
fire-stops around buildings, etc. Camp Howze, the Army
base I lived at in 1973, was dry as dust for those
reasons, a barren island in the midst of a lush river
valley swamped in rice paddies. 

Of course, Pynchon can create whatever sort of
landscape he wants to create.  jbor was criticizing
the story based on the notion that Pynchon had to
alter the Louisiana landscape to make it fit the
literary allusions Pynchon wanted to overlay, and I'm
pointing out that Pynchon has accurately described the
landscape, it's not a stretch to use the literary
allusions he uses, not from the perspective of the
terrain, at least.  Whether his literary allusions
work in the story is another question.

Pynchon mentions the broiling sun several times --
that's accurate, in the summer at least.  He mentions
sand in the first sentence of the story -- "around the
barracks that housed the company's radio section."
This may be the result of clearing vegetation away for
fire prevention, following Army S.O.P.  The same sand
is in the story's second sentence. That same sand
again and a "fringe of green" grass on page 30,
obviously part of the company area landscaping scene,
that same sandy area again on 32. This is within the
realm of naturally occuring landscape in that part of
Louisiana -- even if it weren't,  the lack of
vegetation and presence of the sand could be the
result of a  commander determined to keep his base
squared away, free of the vegetation that might
overtake it without constant effort. That's the sort
of thing that "work details" often keep the GIs busy
doing. Other popular activities -- painting;
spit-shining shoes that already carry a mirror polish;
cleaning latrines, kitchens, etc.; unpacking,
checking, re-packing all kinds of gear; cleaning
weapons; etc.  Gotta keep those GIs busy doing
something.

Once they leave the base and travel south, coming
closer to the Gulf, they enter the bayou lands and
coastal swamps.  Fort Roach would be in the terrace
landscape, describe in the article I quote below.

In a sub-tropical climate like that in southwest
Louisiana, you get both the rain for lush growth and
the broiling sun. It's that way all along the coast of
the Gulf of Mexico -- including the coastal area over
near Corpus Christi, Texas where my mother lives. To
describe southwestern Lousiana as nothing more than
one big swamp just isn't accurate, although there is a
lot of swamp land and marshy tidal areas along the
coast and in the Mississippi delta to be sure.

> This is a land of decay and growth, and they 
>are
>really the same thing here (everywhere?).

Two phases of one cycle, but not "the same thing."

-Doug


"Louisiana shares the general physiographic
characteristics common to the Gulf Coast states of the
southern United States, with the vital exception of
the Mississippi River, which flows through the state
and extends its delta far into the Gulf of Mexico. The
changing course of this great North American river has
created the huge Atchafalaya basin and has dumped tons
of sediment along the coast. Despite this, it has been
estimated that the beachless coastline of Louisiana is
eroding at a rate of about 16 square miles per year
because the system of levees, or embankments,
constructed by the federal government to keep the
Mississippi in a central channel, has left side
channels open to erosion. 

Three types of regions are found in Louisiana:
lowlands, terraces, and hills. The lowlands consist of
the coastal marshes and the Mississippi floodplain
with its natural levees and moderate relief. The Red
River valley has a low elevation relief but with many
raft lakes, built up by impounding water from a number
of log jams, and red soils in association with its
alluvial plain. The terraces include much of the
so-called Florida Parishes above and to the northeast
of the Mississippi and the prairies of southwestern
Louisiana. Upland hills are on either side of the Red
River valley and in the northern portion of the
Florida Parishes; the state's highest elevation, in
northwestern Louisiana, is 535 feet (163 metres) above
sea level.

Soils 
The soils of Louisiana have been one of the state's
priceless resources; nearly one-third of the total
land area is covered by the rich alluvium deposited by
the overflowing of its rivers and bayous. Muck and
peat soils are found within the coastal marshes, while
the bottoms hold rich alluvial soils: the lighter and
coarser bottom soils of the Mississippi and Red river
valleys and older alluvium and loessial, or windblown,
soils. Within the uplands, or hills, there are more
mature soils that are less fertile.

[...] Natural vegetation in Louisiana is found in
three major divisions: the first consists of forest,
upland pines and hardwoods, bottomland hardwoods, and
bald cypress; the second of prairie, or dry grassland;
and the third of marshland, or wet grassland. In the
southern half of the state, along a zone running
westward from Baton Rouge, the live oak with its
characteristic drapings of Spanish moss predominates.
The magnolia, whose blossom is the state flower, grows
throughout the state. 

Muskrats and other fur-bearing rodents, together with
alligators, have been trapped in the marshes of
southern Louisiana. There is a great variety of birds,
native and migrant, but the once-frequent brown
pelican (the state bird) and the wild turkey are
endangered. The gray squirrel, deer, and dove are
plentiful. Fish, shrimp, crayfish, crab, and oyster
are a source of food and of income in the coastal and
swamp areas. [...] 

"Louisiana" Encyclopædia Britannica
<http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=121286>
[Accessed December 5, 2002]. 




=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com