Memory guided me on trip I took this past weekend, all the way out to a part of the Bogue Chitto National Wildlife Refuge, just past the Megehee Cemetery, where I used to go to hike and enjoy the scenery and where my son and I once hunted.

Way back in there is an egret rookery I have not visited since before Hurricane Katrina.

The trip was instigated by meeting a bird watcher on Friday at the controlled burn across from Crosby Arboretum.

She was talking about birds and all the other volunteers around her referred to her as the “bird watcher lady.”

I had seen the rookery all those years before, though I’m not sure any egrets returned after Katrina, and told her about it.

The reason for my trip to that old favorite spot is that I have made only one trip back to the area of the Megehee Cemetery in the refute since the hurricane and could give the “bird watcher lady” only vague directions.

I decided Genie and I would go out there on Saturday so I could leave a better set of directions, at least to the jumping off place into the swamp past the cemetery, at the arboretum for the bird watcher. I didn’t trek off into the swamp to hunt the rookery.

What I found, though, when I reached the jumping off site disturbed me. Before, the area was pretty wild. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has built a gray rock road into the area just above the swamp and already people who say they appreciate the wild, but obviously don’t, are leaving trash and litter. Before, if you didn’t know where to turn, you couldn’t get there. Yes, there was some litter then, but not like what I saw on Saturday. Maybe I won’t go back. The bloom is off that rose.