Atchafalaya Autumn

Rating:
Summary: The simple life
Review: At first glance, it is the photographs of the sunrises and sunsets of Louisiana's swamp basin that draw you inside. But once you begin to read, you are drawn immediately to the side of yourself that longs for a more simple life, a time for yourself when you can reflect and just be. Greg Guirard has provided a medium by which one can begin the search for oneself, to seek that refuge in nature, to be one with the land.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing book that makes a perfect gift!
Review: Excellent! A glorious, most beautiful photographic record of stunning sunsets, egrets and white pelicans, a baby red-shouldered hawk, great old-growth cypress trees, sunrise at Lake Fausse Point, scenes from Bayou Benoit and more. This author and photographer has painstakingly and very successfully recorded for us those fleeting moments of silence, peace, and wonder that are a glimpse of paradise - moments of joy so rare and complete that few ever experience them. This book is ultimately a guided tour, a searching, a journey of the mind and spirit through time...through cycles...through the magic hours of sunrise (hope, rebirth, new life) and sunset (rest and perhaps the end of things as we know them). We are blessed to have such a knowledgeable guide willing to share the secrets and beauty of the swamp, and provide us with sad evidence of what is happening to steal the Atchafalaya's beauty from us forever.

Well-organized, interesting and easy to read, Atchafalaya Autumn is hard to put down. Through his own words and those of Thoreau, Wordsworth and Bigler, the author makes us feel right at home, sharing his thoughts and field journal in an important expose of life in the Atchafalaya River Basin - it is a book about the art of mindfulness and caring, and it answers the question of "Whatever happened to those big cypress trees, anyway?" Photos of Kindall and Shane Doucet holding two huge frogs, Wilvin Hayes showing off the 201 pound garfish he caught, the Basin Brothers Cajun band seated in a towering cypress, Roy Blanchard bringing in his catch and Myrtle with Harold Bigler make this book a wonderful introduction to the Cajun culture. When I revisit this book, I feel I have friends I have known for years greeting me after an absence! This book is for you and me, and it's about all of us, really. It musters in me a firm resolve to live my life differently, more respectfully, more fully, more deliberately, and to learn how to slow down and enjoy each moment. Atchafalaya Autumn remains a favorite of mine, along with Cajun Families of the Atchafalaya, and The Land of Dead Giants, also by Greg Guirard. These books make excellent, wondrous gifts, and I recently gave a copy of Atchafalaya Autumn to my doctor's office for the waiting room. Certainly, no public or school library should be without all of them!