Northeast Louisiana does not do water the way the rest of the state does. The cypress swamps, the silty bayous, the dark delta lakes — that is Louisiana's standard offering. Up here, the piney uplands drain differently. Lake Claiborne runs clear enough that you can see your feet, which is why it has one of the few genuine sand swimming beaches in the state park system. Caney Lake, on a 294-acre peninsula near Chatham, has produced some of the largest bass ever caught in Louisiana, and a governor who wrote "You Are My Sunshine" and lived to 101 has his name on the sign. Farther south, the Poverty Point Reservoir — completed in 2002, facilities still catching up — sits in the Mississippi Flyway, where cormorants, bald eagles, and pelicans work the same air corridors they always have. The reservoir is engineered. The logic behind it is 3,500 years old.
