  I lived in New Orleans in the late 1990s. So when I saw a preview last night of Trouble the Water, a unique documentary on the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, it brought me back.
The film used extensive footage shot by a New Orleans resident to chronicle a neighborhood in the 9th Ward as it was consumed by flood waters. Created by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, documentary film makers whose work includes substantial contributions to Michael Moore's films, Trouble the Water won the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival, which is no small achievement.
My wife and I know Tia and Carl a bit, and so we were invited to a screening of their project in Washington – and it transported me for a few hours. Make no mistake: my New Orleans was not the city shown in this film. But I was married in the St. Louis Cathedral, near Cafe du Monde; had my reception at Molly's on the Market, where the reporters drank; and spent my days working for The Times-Picayune and fixing up a house in the Carrleton neighborhood, a few blocks from Plum Sreet Snowballs.
I didn't have the trawler back then, but my wife and I rode an Avon with a rinky dink engine on the Tchefuncte River and neighboring bayous; made more than one trip on Honey Island Swamp Tours in Slidell; and generally made use of the water in and around Lake Pontchartrain. You couldn't swim in it, even back then, but Pontchartrain was still an impressive body of water. When you are in the middle of the lake on an average day, you can't see land on either side. I even had a pirogue (pronounced pee-rogue), one of those canoe-looking fishing boats that are native to Louisiana.
It was a great time in my life.
When Katrina hit, I was a reporter for The New York Times. I begged my editors to send me, but they weren't hearing it. I was relegated to work other angles. I did some stories about contracting, and a profile of James Lee Witt. But I never made it down there.
REVISITING NEW ORLEANS
Last year, I visited New Orleans for my 10-year wedding anniversary. It was the first time I had been back since Katrina, and the trip was bittersweet. So many friends had disappeared. So many neighborhoods were blighted, with abandoned shell houses standing ghostlike block after block. Of course, I made a trip to the Lake Pontchartrain waterfront, and there too found blight. Boat houses caved in, fractured hulls piled atop one another and lots of murky, lifeless water (Troy Gilbert did a good job of chronicling the plight of the New Orleans waterfront for Mad Mariner in January).
More important than the physical damage was the emotional toll struck by the hurricane. Families and friends were scattered, and when the weather cleared, they were grouped forever into those who stayed and those who left. Even two years after the hurricane, the city was still consumed by Katrina. Talking to shop keepers, waiters, bar tenders and others, it felt like a wake was in progress, one in which the only rightous topic of conversation was the dead person. It made me wonder how long it will take for this city to truly recapture its carefree spirit.
Funny enough, I watched a boat sink while I was there. It was April and the winds were gusting to more than 30 knots as a large wooden ketch, apparently sans engine, came too close to the sea wall. The captain tried but could not tack out. The boat hit and then dug in.
There was apparently some negotiation between the owners and the Coast Guard over whether she could be saved (we used this tale in a larger piece on the Anatomy of a Rescue). Ultimately, the boat was smashed against the wall and went down, her sails still up and her lines still sheeted. I watched as her owners clawed pieces from the wreckage.
I spoke to them, and they were stunned, as one might expect. But even there on the wall, watching pieces of their wooden boat float in a sickening beachfront stew, still wet and wearing their floatation, they seemed to have some perspective. Everyone made it. They could, and probably would, sail on that lake again.
Seems like an apt metaphore to me. At least, I hope so.
