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P E R S P E C T I V E S : I M A G E S O F O U R S TAT E
Guardian of the Wetlands ARTIST JOHN TAYLOR IS ONE OF THE LAST ADVOCATES FOR THE BAYOU BIENVENUE WETLAND TRIANGLE By Lauren Heffker
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rowing up, lifelong Lower Ninth Ward resident John Taylor spent his childhood wandering into the underbelly of the bayou adjacent to his neighborhood, then emerging with whatever wild things he could wrangle up. Earning nicknames from his neighbors like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, he’d go crawfishing, crabbing, and trapping for snapping turtles, rabbit, and nutria, or foraging for herbs and roots to sell at market; what game scraps he couldn’t sell often made it onto his family’s dinner table. Today, at age seventy-three, Taylor still spends his long hours wading through those same woods, more at home there than within the confines of his Royal Street shotgun. These days, though, the stomping grounds of his youth look much different, and instead of returning home with a newly expired haul in hand, he collects massive, misshapen pieces of driftwood to carry back, along with any other debris that catches his eye. The salvaged largesse then lands upon Taylor’s front porch, waiting to be carved and whittled into walking sticks, a trade he learned from his father. The works of art created by the New Orleans naturalist, storyteller, and artist were the subject of the recent exhibition, Guardian of the Wetlands: Works by John Taylor, at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, presented by the museum and the National Wildlife Federation. His body of work reflects a lifetime of exploring the rapidly changing landscape of his home, calling to attention Louisiana’s extensive wetland loss. Many may find the environmental history of the Lower Ninth Ward surprising, mostly because native elders like Taylor are likely the only ones left who can call to memory the sprawling image of the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle, the onceflourishing freshwater cypress swamp that stretched from the Lower Ninth to Lake Borgne and provided a profusion of natural resources for the neighboring community up until the early sixties. Then, as a result of destructive manmade levee and canal
construction—such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet shipping channel, for example—the wetlands became saltwater marsh, its reduced remains are referred to as a brackish “ghost swamp.” But before the hulking cypress became shrunken, hollow husks, before the deterioration and erosion— the neighborhood once resembled rich rural bliss, with blackberry bushes, mulberry trees, wild onions, peppergrass, and poke sallet growing along the natural levee; hyacinth lilies dotting the water’s surface. At Taylor’s household, he and his siblings— four brothers and six sisters—tended to fig and pumpkin trees, mirliton vines, and even helped raise chickens and a pair of hogs. “The Ninth Ward was almost like the country then,” Taylor said. “All these wild things were what people used to cook, you know, this stuff was what actually would keep people alive when they didn't have money to buy food, and so they’d go out and hunt around,” he said. Taylor has made a living on the water his entire life, from his early days catching game and seafood to working on the river barges, tugboats, and shrimping trawlers as an adult. Even during his few brief stints away from the city he lived on a coast, and always ended up coming back. “Well, I was married three times so every time I got a divorce, I got the hell out of the city,” he explained. But as a boy, Taylor dreamt of being a game warden when he grew up; it was a path he was held back from pursuing, though, because “there were no Black game wardens,” he was told, leaving a hurt that still resides when he recalls the memory. Among renewed cultural interest in coastal sustainability today, however, he bears the prestigious title of Wetlands Specialist for the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development. “If I could turn it back right now, to the way it was, you know, to undeveloped land and they didn't want to do anything with it, I’d go put up right in the middle of it,” Taylor said. “That would be wonderful. That would be a nice way to die, the way I wanted to live.” h
Learn more about the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development at sustainthenine.org. Read more on Taylor as an artist and advocate at: ogdenmuseum.org/exhibition/johntaylor
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John Taylor, Walking Stick 1. Courtesy of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
