The voyage in the little wooden houseboat started in June on the Red River, shifting over to the Atchafalaya and then down into the bayous that cut through southern Louisiana. A few weeks in, the days melted into a blur of sweat, bug bites and chance encounters with strangers.
One of them caught, killed and cooked an alligator when he heard that the boat’s crew had never tried it before. Another saw the vessel pulling up to his property and called the police. Now, Wes Modes, its owner and captain, had it moored at a marina wedged between two bridges in Houma, La., a city of 31,000 set on Bayou Terrebonne. It was Saturday morning, and a steady stream of residents approached. It was a strange sight, after all — a floating shack, rising and falling with the tides.
“Where did you put in?” someone asked.
“Where are you going?” added another.
But the captain — who had started the trip near Alexandria, in the central part of the state, and would end it in New Orleans — had a pressing question for them, too: What role have the rivers, bayous, swamps and marshes that helped define Louisiana played in their lives and livelihoods?
For more than a decade, the boat has crisscrossed the country — traveling over portions of the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, among others — as part of a quixotic pursuit of knowledge and escape that the captain calls “A Secret History of American River People.”
“We always kind of say, ‘Come for the shanty boat, but stay for the deeper stories,’” said Mx. Modes, who uses they/them pronouns and tells just about everyone to call them Wes.
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