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How to survive in a Louisiana swamp Cajun culture is vanishing from the bayou

A picnic on a bayou in Louisiana, 1950. (Ivan Dmitri/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty)

A picnic on a bayou in Louisiana, 1950. (Ivan Dmitri/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty)

AmericaDispatchLouisianaSocietyTravelUS

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Peter Santenello

3 Aug 2026 - 12:00am 12 mins

I’d come because I was curious about what drives someone to live in a swamp. The flat-bottomed boat nosed through the murky water like an alligator. At the tiller, Keith steered with the confidence of a man who’d run these channels since boyhood, his camouflage style and mirrored sunglasses screaming summer of ’87. Tara sat up front, loose strands of blonde hair breaking free from her braid in the cool wind.

We were slinking through the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest river swamp in the United States. It’s about an hour and a half west of New Orleans, Louisiana, where the French Quarter had been restless the night before, with partying tourists and jazz bands. I’d heard Pierre Part (population: 3,000) was about as Cajun as you could get; that it was the most French-speaking town in the US outside a village in Maine. And so that’s where I’d headed.

Out here on the water, the landscape reminded me a bit of the Florida Everglades: an overgrown, labyrinthine place for die-hards and outlaws. A last frontier feeling. This was a place for people who wanted to chart their own course in some downright hostile conditions. I’d come to Pierre Part to meet a couple who’d decided that their American dream was to live part-time in a one-room wooden houseboat on a swamp.

Keith motored us around town a bit, passing porches, docks, weathered houses set close to the water. Pierre Part was essentially an island — a long stretch of high ground surrounded by wetlands. Tara pointed out landmarks. Her grandparents’ house. The street where her stepmom grew up, and her parents before her, and their parents before them. It felt like moving through her family photo album. “This is the end of the road,” Tara said as I looked at the last house on the bank. Everything from here was by boat.

For a stretch it was nothing but open water, brown and opaque. A faint stagnant odour came off the surface. Along the shore, the cypress trees blurred into a solid brown-green wall until little dark cuts began to show. “We call ’em a bayou run,” Keith hollered. “There’s a maze of ’em, just like trails in a forest.” He steered left into a narrow channel. It felt a little mysterious, a separate ecosystem that could only be accessed through local Cajun knowledge. Here and there houseboats appeared along the bank.

In the distance, I noticed a man sitting on the small porch of a grey cabin. “Who are you, and what are you doing on our houseboat?” Tara called out. She had this fantastic accent, a Southern drawl with a touch of French that carried a playful ease.

“I’m the boogeyman!” The man smiled.

Tara burst out laughing. “That’s my dad,” she said. “He’s 82.”

We floated closer. Tara climbed up to tie the rope around the porch post. Her father looked no older than 60 — lean and upright in a faded denim shirt and cap.

“How are you doing, sir?” I asked.

“I’m doing,” he said, reaching out his hand for a shake. “Carlis Goday.” In his Cajun accent, the weight landed on the second syllables.

“The man without a car, Car-less. Last name’s Go-day. If you can’t go nights, you go days.”

‘Keith steered with the confidence of a man who’d run these channels since boyhood.’ (Credit: Peter Santenello/YouTube)<br>Tara gave me a little tour of the house, which looked no bigger than 250 square feet. “This is the kitchen.” She pointed to the propane four-burner stove in one corner, a single counter opposite, and a roll-out grill wedged between. “Keith does all the outside cooking, I do the inside. We haul this grill out onto the porch just to give us more room in here.” The rest of the room was simple: a bunk bed, a futon folded into a couch, life jackets, tools. Fishing gear in organised piles. A flatscreen TV and an enclosed bathroom with a toilet were the only luxuries. A small sign nailed to the wall read BORN TO FISH, FORCED TO WORK.

Come summer, Keith told me, the bayou turned into a playground: waterskiing, hydrosliding, wake-boarding, swimming in clear pockets before the water thickened to pea green. “The snapping turtles you gotta be wary of, they can really bite,” Tara warned.

“We’ve got a swimming spot we love, even with alligators everywhere.” She smiled at my wide eyes, as if living a few feet above alligators was the most...