I woke up early as usual, and did some work on pictures and things for school. About eight, there was a whir of activity and everybody else jumped out of bed and drank some coffee. We were supposed to leave right around that time for Briarwood, a nature preserve near Natchitoches where we had reservations for a ten o’clock tour.
It took us a while to get there, and I must say the GSP was pretty helpful. We went through a number of small towns as we went over two lane rural highways. We finally turned down a dirt road, and, after a few hundred feet, we were there.
Briarwood is one of the few strands of old growth forest left in Louisiana. Here you can get a sense of what northern Louisiana looked like before the French arrived in the mid-eighteenth century.
Briarwood was the childhood home of Caroline Dormon. Starting in the mid 1930’s, Dormon collected information about the plants and animals of Louisiana. She took pictures, collected specimens, and wrote volumes about her discoveries. Here is a picture of Miss Dormon – she never married – in her later years.
Briarwood was her home throughout most of her life, and she lived here in a small cabin. For much of the time she lived there, she had no electricity, and she only grudgingly allowed a phone line late in her life when her friends feared for her health living alone in the woods. Her house is still preserved much as it was when she lived there.
We had Jessie, a very knowledgeable tour guide to take us through the 350 acre preserve and show us the native plants. Caroline Dormon not only preserved the forest at Briarwood, but she planted native plants from around Louisiana and the south in a natural woodland environment. Briarwood is remarkable because it is a botanical garden which looks nothing the near rows of carefully label plants that we think of when we hear the words “botanical garden”. Jessie helped us to see plants which we might have otherwise not observed and explained about each. She drove us around in an electric cart.
In the picture below, Jessie is the woman on the right side by the steering wheel. The woman in front is Shirley, Sherry’s mother. Sherry Kerr and Tom Giles are in the back.
Here you can see a native azalea.
This is a native flox.
And I think this was a native sweet olive, though I should have taken closer notes when Jessie was explaining.
We saw examples in the cabin and the small visitors center of Miss Dormon’s plant drawings. They are truly exquisite.
After our tour of Briarwood, we went to Natchitoches, the only large town in this part of Louisiana for lunch. Now pronunciation can be a little challenging anywhere in Louisiana, but this town has possibly the greatest disconnect between letters and sounds. Natchitoches is pronounced "NACK-uh-tish". Go figure….
But however you say the name, it is a lovely small Southern town. Founded in 1714, it has the distinction of being the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. It is located on the Cane River, an oxbow of the Red River.
Natchitoches is most famous as the setting for the play and movie Steel Magnolias. This is the house where the characters played by Julia Roberts and Sally Fields lived. It is now a bed and breakfast.
We took a horse cab for a short and very pleasant tour of the town.
We returned back to Shreveport in the late afternoon. Tom’s daughter, her husband, and their child were in town for the holiday. They live in Texas. They stopped by to talk, but could not unfortunately stay for dinner. Sherry cooked us a nice supper, and we watched Steel Magnolias.
