On the LSU Lakes

I moved to Baton Rouge in the fall of 1989 to start school at LSU. Ever since then, I've never been more than a few minutes from the lakes that frame the campus. I've walked, driven, and cycled around the lakes countless times. I've seen them smooth as glass and frothy with whitecaps, teeming with wildlife, and covered with rotting dead fish. These little lakes can give you anything.

The urban legend is that someone way back in the ignorant days (it varies with the telling) didn't want Southern University to be built on a site next to LSU, so they had lakes dug instead. This could be true: the only web site that Google found me with a history of the LSU lakes was in the .lsu.edu domain, but the web page had been pulled out of publication. And it is really shallow. More on that in a bit.

Amazingly, the search for "LSU lakes" returned 27,000 hits. Of course there are some false alarms in there, but hell, that's one page for every 10 people in town. There are just a heck of a lot of people photographing and writing about these little ponds.

One result of my search caught my eye. This is from a site with transcripts from our local news on channel 2. (2023 update: Original page link dead)

THE L-S-U LAKES ARE A POPLUAR PLACE TO JOG, RIDE BIKES AND EVEN FISH. BUT APPARENTLY. THERE'S AN ALLIGATOR THAT'S TAKEN UP RESIDENCE AT THE LAKES ON DALRYMPLE. VERONICA MOSGROVE JOINS US FROM THE LAKES. VERONICA. WE'RE USED TO GATORS IN SWAMPS. BUT HOW COMMON IS IT FOR A GATOR TO HANG OUT IN THE CITY??? WELL, NOT TOO COMMON.BUT WE HAVE TO REMEMBER. THIS IS SOUTH LOUISIANA. AND I'M TOLD GATORS CAN FIND THEIR WAY TO ALMOST ANY BODY OF WATER....

I will be the first to attest that regular Channel 2 viewers might need to be reminded from time to time which state they live in. I swear, our local news is so asinine, I could spit. You wouldn't believe the irate rant that I edited out of this post.

Zooming across the lake.

Recently, Mrs. skinnyonbenny and I started kayaking on the bigger LSU lake for a light workout in the evenings. As much time as I have spent around the lake, the perspective is different in the middle. I would think to myself, "paddle over to the spot with the cypress knees where the big white geese hang out," and it would take a little bit of searching to find that point. This was a complete surprise. I thought that every spot would be visible and easy to find.

I had often noticed that you could look into the lake from time to time, and see a bird standing in ankle-deep water out in the middle. Once you get out there, you see that stumps are plentiful. And even when you are 10-20 yards from shore, you might be in water a foot or so deep. This isn't the lake to use when you are trying to sink a dead body.