End of World sign near New Orleans gone with the wind

New Orleans Times-Picayune:

There used to be a sign at the end of the road in Delacroix, at the termination of Highway 300, that said "End of the World."

The official state Department of Transportation and Development map identifies the endless expanse beyond this point as, simply "Hunting and Trapping."

Of course, that sign and that map predate Aug. 29.

On that date, the sign disappeared, washed away like just about every man-made structure in lower St. Bernard Parish. The End of the World went from being a commentary on geography to a statement on what happened here on Aug. 29. The sign itself washed out to sea. Obliterated.

Some other time, some other place.

And the land mass that reaches forever southeast to Black Bay and Breton Sound -- next stop, Cuba -- is currently of indeterminate quality as the famous pristine Louisiana sporting grounds it once was.

Standing at what was once the End of the World, a commercial fisherman named Cap'n Rocky Morales, a brick house of a man, gestures toward the horizon -- the Hunting and Trapping -- and says: "It was marshland before. Now it's just water."

Indeed, as far as the eye can see, mostly water, with lumps of land trying to rise up, trying to break through, trying to dry out. Trying to exist. Kind of like St. Bernard itself.

The tidal surge that Katrina's brutal storm bands pushed into this land took everything, including the sure footing, geographically speaking (and perhaps psychologically as well).

...