It had been four years since I been home. That's 1460 days, 35,040 hours, or 2,102,400 minutes. I did not know what to expect. Would it all be the same as I last seen? Or would it be some unfamiliar land that I would have learn all over again? Who was gone and who was still there? These types of questions race through my mind during the flights back. Thanks to social media, I was able to somewhat keep up with what was going on back home. I was excited to finally inhale that fresh country air.
Landing in New Orleans, I was overrun with all kinds of feelings. Happiness, shock and numbness to name a few. As I took the 90min drive back home from the airport, the words "I'm actually home" kept replaying in my head. Of course, I landed late that night and the drive home was done exclusively during the night. So the only thing that I saw was the lights from business, streetlights, and other cars on the highway. But I only needed to see one thing to wipe any doubt from my mind and it was the "Baldwin/Louisa" exit on US 90. It stood tall at the fork in the road with 90 continuing left and the exit beginning on the right.
I was home for 11 days. 264 hours, and 15,840 minutes. I had to make the most of my time here. Take it all in. So I set out to visit family and friends on the front end of the trip and use the remaining time to photograph as much as could of this place I called home. It was a two objective mission. The first was to capture this place I call home in its purest form and the other was to show that there is more to Louisiana than just New Orleans.
Welcome to St. Mary Parish, a majority rural area nestled in heel of the Louisiana. A place where there's not many places you can go and not see a sugarcane field or waterway snaking its way through the countryside. We love crawfish and eat just about anything. From alligator, frog, and raccoons, to squirrel, rabbit, chitterlings, and tripe. Google the last two if you don't know what they are. We hunt, fish and live off the land. The outdoors is a big part of our upbringing and livelihoods. We ride four wheelers off the roads and on the roads.
As kids we made do with what we had. We swam in the bayou, played football in the fields and ate sugarcane plucked straight from the ground. We walked on the train tracks, played on the train tracks. Your friend's momma was your momma and vice versa. We had manners and spoke to our elders with sir and m'am. As a family, we all went to church on Sunday's and the Sunday meal was done before we left. The prime example of "it takes a village to raise a kid".
This is my home.
