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Bayou D'Arbonne: Memories of Boyhood

In the beginning there was mud, bayou mud, molding the ontogeny of the boy.  The summer of 1964 was the beginning for him, when he was thirteen and loosed upon the bayou and its swamp for the first time.  Rules were minimal.  Even the "be home by dark" decree was rescinded by autumn.  An intimacy with local geology started with the half-mile barefoot walk from home to the bayou.

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.