#1: [21-Feb-01]

04-Mar-2001 -- This is the fourth of the confluence points around my hometown of Minden, LA, that I have visited, and by far the most remote. It is about 100 yards east of Natchitoches Parish Road 211 in a loblolly pine plantation. The confluence point falls in the bed of an intermittent creek that was flowing while I was there but does not rate a blue line on the maps. I reached the point by turning east off LA 9 on NPR 210, and then east again on NPR 211. Excessive rains had rendered the well-maintained roads marginal in many places. I found a dry spot to park at the 32 degree parallel that left room for another vehcle to pass. At 2 PM, my van was the first vehicle to have traveled that road since the rain the night before, and no one else traveled the road while I was there. The hike out is always easier than the one in because going in you are following a reasonably straight line proscribed by a GPS, while coming back out you follow the path of least resistance going in a general direction.

This area had been clear-cut and replanted about fifteen years previously, so it has the briar-patchy-mixed-with-more-open undergrowth typical of pine plantations. Some of the more interesting flora included parsley hawthorn, greenbriar, hercules club, and, in the creek bottom, trout lily and ground cherry. This hercules club (aralia spinosa L.) is also known as devil's-walkingstick and is a member of the ginseng family. It is not to be confused with another tree called hercules club (xanthoxylum clava-hercules L.), also known as prickly ash and toothache tree, a member of the citrus family.