By Laura Hunt Miller
We set out at first light.
The terrain was unforgiving from the start, a dense tangle of loblolly and sweetgum pressing close on either side. The canopy was a cathedral of shadows and threats looming over our every step. The air was thick, alive even with the kind of humidity that doesn’t so much surround you as hold you hostage, settling into your clothes and hair like a bad smell.
Vindictive vines, armed with thorns seemingly engineered for the destruction of exposed ankles, suggested the forest had posted a “KEEP OUT” to visitors. Poison ivy colonized the trail with the confidence of a thing that has never been successfully argued with. Squirrels chittered at our presence, deeply suspicious of our passing.
Fire ants established fortifications along our approach. Mounds rose from the earth like concentrated fury, radiating warnings of pain.
Mosquitoes congregated in organized formations. Whether this was coordinated behavior or simply the statistical outcome of their sheer number was unclear, and practically speaking, irrelevant. The miserable effect was the same.
We pressed on.
The summit came without announcement. A gentle clearing. A sign. A geocache box that had been visited recently enough to contain a stub of pencil and a slightly damp notebook with a handful of names in it. Several of them from Texas. One an elderly gentleman named Gerald who noted only the date and a single word: Nice.
535 feet above sea level. We had done it! We made it to “the roof of Louisiana.” The highway was just audible from our perch.
In a state so thoroughly committed to sea level that its one geographic outlier is basically a rounding error, any solid ground above 500 feet feels exotic. Driskill Mountain, while not technically a mountain, rose to prominence in our state by simply declining to sink along with everything around it. Bravo good chap.
James Christopher Driskill, a Georgia native, bought 324 acres in Louisiana in 1859 looking for farmland. The mountain just happened to come with it.
When Jimmie Davis and his band played “You Are My Sunshine” at the summit before becoming governor of Louisiana five years later, it helped put the hill on the map, with its summit nearly the same height as an early New Orleans skyscraper.
The families that own the property kindly leave the peak open for the public to visit. The trail is actually a nice, under a mile walk, but it’s more fun to pretend like it is a perilous trek.
If you haven’t been to Bienville Parish to see it, you should consider making a light outing of it one day. While the real depth of our state may be more horizontal than vertical (unless you count the salt domes and gas wells), Louisiana is a fine ‘ole gal at any elevation, and our “mountain” is the icing on top.
