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"Be very still a moment, monsieur," I said, "and keep your eyes focused on that log floating against the rock there. Do you see?"

"Yes, but what's so extraordinary about a log that . . . Mon Dieu," he remarked when the log became the baby alligator, its head rising out of the water. It gazed at us and then pushed off to follow the current. "I would have stepped on it."

I laughed just as a flock of geese came around the bend and swooped over the water before turning gracefully to glide over the tops of the cypress trees.

"My father would have blasted them," Pierre commented. We walked a bit farther.

"The swamp has something for every mood," I explained. "Here in the open with the sun reflecting off the water, the lily pads and cattails are thick and rich, but there, just behind the bend, you see the Spanish moss and the dark shadows. I like to pretend they are mysterious places. The crooked and gnarled trees become my fantasy creatures."

"I can see why you enjoyed growing up here," Pierre said. "But these canals are like a maze."

"They are a maze. There are places deep inside where the moss hangs so low, you would miss the entrance to a lake or to another canal. In there you rarely find anything to remind you of the world out here."

"But the mosquitoes and the bugs and the snakes . . ."

"Mama has a lotion that keeps the bugs away, and yes, there are dangers,but, monsieur, surely there are dangers in your world, too."

"And how."

He laughed.

"I have a small pirogue down here, monsieur, just big enough for two people. Do you want to see a little more?"

"Very much, merci."

I pulled my canoe out from the bushes and Pierre got in. "You want me to do the poling?"

"No, monsieur," I said. "You are the tourist."

He laughed and watched me push off and then pole into the current.

"I can see you know what you're doing."

"I've done it so long, monsieur, I don't think about it. But surely you go sailing, n'est-ce pas? You have Lake Pontchartrain. I saw it when I was just a little girl and it looked as big as the ocean."

He turned away and gazed into the water without replying for a moment. I saw his happy, contented expression evaporate and quickly be replaced with a look of deep melancholy.

"I did do some sailing," he finally said, "but my brother was recently in a terrible sailing accident."

"Oh, I'm sorry, monsieur."

"The mast struck him in the temple during a storm and he went into a coma for a long time. He was quite an athletic man and now he's . . . like a vegetable."

"How sad, monsieur."

"Yes. I haven't gone sailing since. My father was devastated by it all, of course. That's why I do whatever I can to please him. But my brother was more of the hunter and the fisherman. Now that my brother is incapacitated, my father is trying to get me to become more like him, but I'm failing miserably, I'm afraid." He smiled. "Sorry to lay the heavy weight of my personal troubles on your graceful, small shoulders."

-"It's all right, monsieur. Quick," I said, pointing to the right to help break him from his deeply melancholy mood, "look at the giant turtle."

"Where?" He stared and stared and then finally smiled. "How do you see these animals like that?"

"You learn to spot the changes in the water, the shades of color, every movement."

"I admire you. Despite this backwoods world in which you live, you do appear to be very content."

I poled alongside a sandbar with its sun-dried top and turned toward a canopy of cypress that was so thick over the water, it blocked ou

t the sun. I showed Pierre a bed of honeysuckle and pointed out two white-tailed deer grazing near the water. We saw flocks of rice birds, and a pair of herons, more alligators and turtles. In my secret places, ducks floated alongside geese, the moss was thicker, the flowers plush.