CAMERON PARISH, La. — Flash back to much calmer times.

Down where Louisiana’s marshy southwestern rim dips into the Gulf of Mexico is Cameron Parish. (Counties in Louisiana are called parishes.) If Louisiana is the “boot,” Cameron Parish is the very back of the heel.

On a map, it occupies a rectangular sliver of land, water, and something in between abutting the Sabine Pass at the Texas border. When I lived in Beaumont, it was my getaway.

It didn’t have much of a beach by most people’s standards — depending on the time of year, the water could be a silty brown — but its treasure was that you could park on the Creole Scenic Byway (Louisiana Highway 87) and walk a good two miles without seeing a single soul except for cows in the pasture across the highway. Not bad for having a public beach all to yourself.

There’s also what I think is the coolest library in the world. Inland, there was the Cameron Prairie National Wildlife Refuge where alligator sightings were guaranteed.

Cameron Parish’s real beauty, like all of Louisiana, is its scenery. There’s no elevation here (unless you know what chenieres are and how to spot them), but plenty of healthy marsh. I moved to Beaumont several months after towns like Cameron, Constance Beach, Holly Beach, Grand Chenier, Hackberry, and Johnsons Bayou were shredded up then washed away by Hurricane Rita, Katrina’s even stronger but less talked about sister from that horrible ’05 season.

They rebuilt. Ike roared into Southeast Texas in 2008, raising the Gulf over the dune lines to submerge them again. They rebuilt, raising their homes, stores, and schools even higher.

Early Thursday morning, this same stretch of coast took the first direct hit from Hurricane Laura. I wonder what these towns looked like during Laura’s midnight assault. Laura is the third major storm there in 15 years. Before that, the last major blow was the tragedy of Hurricane Audrey in 1957, which was almost Laura’s strength.

The people of Cameron Parish are a hearty bunch and they’ll rebuild. But, as always after disasters, you wonder how the character of the place will change. A good example is Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula in Texas, where developers gobbled up open land that Ike swept clean and built for the highest bidders.

Cameron Parish was something of a dying breed of Gulf Coast life: close-knit villages supported by offshore oil and fishermen. Who will decide to head inland for good this time? Three hits in 15 years after 48 years of good luck has to make one think. Who will return? Will they build their buildings even higher or let nature decide what happens to this eroding part of the the Gulf Coast?

#GeographyIsLife