Being There

THESE DAYS, VOLUNTEERS IN NEW ORLEANS'S Lower Ninth Ward can be found trimming, uprooting, and generally hacking at vines, ferns, and feral shrubbery. Louisiana has a lot of "exuberant vegetation," as one Tulane biologist has put it, and when you contemplate the alacrity with which nature is reclaiming the Lower Ninth Ward, you do sense a certain creepy vegetable enthusiasm. Many buildings have been demolished, and many that remain are vacant. Particularly after nightfall, when the few illuminated homes glow like oil platforms in splendid isolation, the overall impression is of one vast sea of weeds stretching as far as the eye can see-all the way to the downtown skyline, with its rookery …