Louisiana Crawfish on the Crystal River
By Mike Sutherland
owner, The River at Crystal Bend
The following was borrowed from Mike’s blog at The River at Crystal Bend’s website. Photos by Don Miller.
Crawfish season in Louisiana means crawfish season in Glen Arbor when you are married to a girl from Lafayette. Every year, come hell or highwater, she has several thousand pounds of mudbugs flown up for decadent massive consumption. Last night (May 7) was the night and I must say, a crawfish boil by Lafayette resident Greg Gilboux is our families favorite meal of the year. If your interested in how we do it, email me and I will give you the details.
Incidentally, the cultural evolution of combining a Southern Belle with a Northern Redneck has become quite a phenomena: The traditions in the South are especially poignant and many times cumbersome here in the North. This crawfish boil has become a tradition at all costs in our family. The logical Northerner would propose “Meijers Shrimp is on sale for 4.99 a Pound. How bout that this year instead of the Lafayette Crawfish for 759.99 a pound?” Of course the Southerners don’t use logic and offer as a counter to this proposal: ”Forget it.”
In any case, I love my wife. I love my kids. I love the Crystal River. I am sure that one day, perhaps as late as my final day on this precious earth, I will concede that logic is perhaps the smallest portion of our spirit that we should be tuning into. The memories of last night could fill an ocean. Indeed, to focus on the moment, to breath in all the good and exhale all the bad; To be opportunistic and seize the moment is perhaps the greatest wisdom any of us can achieve.
All the more reason to get outdoors. Grab your shotgun and line up all your televisions and gameboys on the picnic table. Take aim and let the bullets fly. Then come over to our livery, check out our maps, choose a trip into the wilderness and go! Get off the couch! Get the kids off the couch! Don’t forget, locals are half price in the month of May for all Kayak, Canoe and Tube Rentals as well as Putt Putt on our world championship mini golf course. Get outdoors and make some memories.
