Armand Bayou - Big Island Slough

There are a couple places I canoe in the Houston area, but my favorite one is Armand Bayou. When I was a kid we used to canoe parts of this bayou. We launched in the then isolated Bay Area Park. At the time, a park in the middle of the woods seemed peculiar. These days that place is a blessing and sanctuary in a world of increasing prosperity and progress of concrete and steel. No gasoline powered boats are permitted on these waters.

Armand Bayou has several tributaries. Some of the named ones are Spring Gully, Horsepen Bayou and Big Island Slough. There is some interesting history in this watershed. Armand Bayou was formally called Middle Bayou. Much of what we know of Armand Bayou was created by or altered by subsidence. Big Island Slough is a man made channel.

The Big island Slough canoe launch, low tide.

The Big Island Slough canoe launch, looking upstream.

There is a canoe launch on Big Island Slough. It is accessible from Red Bluff Road. Launching here, I usually take this canal down into Armand Bayou. The lower end of Big Island Slough cuts through a nature preserve. You paddle through a place momentarily overlooked by time and sprawl. The trees, alligators, deer and birds are convincing, and for a moment the bright, fast and loud city seems far away.

But if the tide is right, I sometimes venture upstream.

These are the Red Bluff bridges.

After a heavy rain with a high tide you can paddle all the way up to Fairmont Parkway. This is a six mile day trip from launch to Fairmont and back. Upstream Red Bluff Road the canal passes through a realm where the woods and petrochemical refineries coexist. Maybe someday industry and business will prevail over the natural. Between these roads the channel is cut through an industrial greenway.

Fairmont was the end of the trail for us.

The upper side of Big Island Slough is a unique canoeing experience, very different...

The banks are mowed and clear of brush.

...from canoeing the Colorado and Brazos Rivers. Even as part of me revolts at the kept banks and straight channel, a couple hours on Big Island Slough can produce a trance like calmness. Big Island Slough is unnaturally straight and deep. There are no snags, rocks, gravel bars, sandbars or islands to navigate. The current is slight, and depending on the tide, it flows either direction. After a while you realize you are in a canoe, paddling on the water and in the outdoors. The simple order and structure of this place is soothing. It is a big place compared to most urban settings. Here the sun rises and falls, seasons come and go, tides change, and day and night determine the schedule. There are fish, birds, deer, feral hogs and insects. Gradually you synchronize to a natural acclimation. This is canoe park in a very limited wilderness. Maybe it is less a limited wilderness and more a water garden where two contrasting universes merge.

After paddling this water I get the feeling I am a minor character who has temporarily escaped from an alternate reality from Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four novel.

I enjoy cooking and eating outdoors. I prefer this to a back yard.

Beauty is where you find it.

The upper Big Island Slough is a canoe garden.

Fortunately for me it is not as grim as Nineteen Eighty-Four, even with COVID-19. I can return to a peaceful home, happy children and a loving wife.

The upper waters of Big Island Slough offer a unique visual quietness and escape from the day to day realities.

Some volunteer willows...

...and a tallow tree.

Its easy to gaze the grandeur of large spaces here.

This is a nice trip to make if you want to see some interesting things from a canoe without too much exertion.

Thanks for reading.

MSM