My stories are your stories

Feb 2 – Feb 16

Written in Raleigh, NC

Edited and Posted from Baltimore MD

Roads Less Traveled 

First, if you don’t like bridges over water (troubled or otherwise) you might want to avoid the 24 mile bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. Lucky for me, on the day that I drove across it, the sun shone; there were no crosswinds, and more importantly there was very little traffic.  Despite the favorable conditions, I was happy to get to the other side and head west over land, traveling through rural Louisiana and back into Mississippi. I passed one Trump-Pence sign: billboard sized, faded, in the front lawn of a home. 

First camp was at Natchez State Park near Natchez, Mississippi. 

It rained, I read. 

Next up, Lefleur’s State Park in Jackson, Mississippi. 

My campsite was sandwiched between 4 pup tents (housing for a 3-generation family, 4 adults and 2 children, along with 3 dogs and a puppy) and a 40 foot Dodge Durango Gold (home to a middle-aged couple and a Great Dane). I felt like Goldilocks in my “just right” van. 

The extended family reminded me of the Joads from The Grapes of Wrath. Certainly, this family was poor. I wondered what they had left and what they were seeking on the road. Like the many houses I’d seen when traveling through rural America with their contents spilling out onto their lawns, this family’s belongings spilled out the tailgate of their truck. I don’t know how they all arrived in one vehicle. They were there when I arrived and still there when I left 2 days later. 

An attempt at conversation failed as the father of the kids said he was hard of hearing and walked away. Later, I heard one of the men referring to me as an alien. Maybe it was a reference to my Maryland license plates but in all truthfulness, I didn’t feel like I belonged.  

That night it poured rain. I was happy to be off the ground and dry in my van. At 3 am, I awoke to a cacophony of yelping dogs and human curses. From what I could make out, a dog had gotten loose and then someone stepped on someone else in a tent. In the morning, a Monday, the truck and the men were gone and the contents of the tents were hung on makeshift clothes-lines by the open fire. I noticed, for the first time, that electrical cords extended into each of the tents. Did they have heaters or lights or both?

Although their living conditions were harsh, they had running water, electricity, access to heated bathrooms with showers, lots of wood for fuel, all for about $25/night assuming the grandmother was eligible for the senior discount. The men returned just before sun-down and dinner was served. I slept through the night and the truck was gone again in the morning. 

The stay in State Parks is usually limited to 14 days. Where would they go next? Hopefully, they were moving south. 

My next stop was Trace State Park near Oxford, Mississippi. 

The purpose of stops in Jackson and later in Oxford was to visit the homes of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner. I walked the gardens of Welty’s home and Bailey’s Woods at Rowan Oak. I felt more of an affinity toward Eudora. As I inspected her camellias, I remembered how her character, Mrs. Larkin, in the short story A Curtain of Green, had reminded me of myself in my garden back in Baltimore. 

Eudora’s home was just as she’d left it. Books everywhere. Pages of a manuscript lay on the dining room table, cut into ribbons, sentences rearranged and stapled together like a patchwork quilt. Later, another visual craft lesson: Faulkner’s chapter outlines for A Fable (for which he won a Pulitzer) written with red grease and graphite pencils on the walls of his office. 

After leaving Jackson, I listened to the Optimist’s Daughter, Eudora’s Pulitzer Prize winning short novel, and thought about how I might tie two of my previously written short stories together using a similar structure. 

I still haven’t gotten through The Sound and the Fury on Audible. I think it is one  that I’ll have to read.

Oxford is also the home of Ole Miss, established in 1848. The university did not enroll Black students until 1962 and only after a riot that brought 13,000 soldiers to the town. Today, there is a lively town square with plaques reminding us of the violence of the past. And, there are at least three book stores around the square, one with the pictures of the many authors who have read there. After a lunch special which included country fried steak, mashed potatoes, french fries, and butter beans at Ajax Diner, I grabbed a cappuccino at Square Books. While there, I picked up the memoir Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life and a Dog Called Fig, and later learned that the author lives in Kingston, Ontario, the town where I attended University. As much as Helen Humphreys loves her dogs, she convinced me that a vizsla is not the dog for me. 

From Jackson,  I followed the Natchez Trace, a two lane scenic highway that runs 444 miles from Natchez to Nashville along an old Native American trading trail. In the18th and early 19th centuries, it was used by pioneer settlers, traders, and soldiers. Today, it is popular for bikers or for travelers, like myself, who seek the road less traveled. Given the time of year, I only drove around a handful of bikers and rarely met another car. 

Along this route are multiple Indian mounds. The one at Bear Creek is a square, flat-topped mound reported to have been built between 1100 and 1300 AD and thought to have been used for ceremonial or elite residential use. For the most part, the Trace is a road cut through forest. Every mile or so, I would pass a freshly cut tree trunk lying perpendicular to the road. I wondered who monitors for fallen trees and how often? Who would I call if I happened upon one? But, alas, my worries were needless.  I did make two abrupt stops, not for a fallen tree or deer, but for a little beagle with a collar who had his nose down to a scent and later for two blonde wild dogs running circles in the middle of the highway. 

Nearing Nashville, I saw markers for the Trail of Tears  and was reminded again of the people who lived here for centuries before European settlers arrived and how Native Americans were pushed from the land that they were dependent upon and for which they felt responsible: a sacred bond. I learned that Davy Crockett opposed the Indian Removal Act  and after losing his congressional seat moved to Texas only to be killed at the Battle of the Alamo.

One of the books that I read during this segment of travel was Wendell Berry’s small book: Think Little. One of the reasons that I like less traveled secondary highways is that they tend to follow the contours of the land. “Roads,” Berry writes, “wish to avoid contact with the landscape.” He likens modern highways to bridges, they “go over the country, rather than through it”. They destroy topography. They allow speed but in return give us “dissatisfaction and anxiety”. I kept imagining ghosts popping out beside the signs that pointed to the “Old Trace”, the paths where people had an intimate “knowledge of [the] place”. I was also reminded of walking with my dad on the trails of Frontenac Park, where he knew every inch of every trail, every contour, where to spot the Cardinal Flower and when it would be blooming, or point out the small patch of Rattlesnake Plantain. And now, after 15 years of vacationing at my cottage in rural Ontario, I know where to find the Yellow Ladyslippers along the trails or where the wild asparagus can be found along the roadsides. I know where the loon is likely to nest and where the otters play. 

Berry’s words fit my Dad. “Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death – dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground. He sees his source and his destiny, and they are acceptable to him.” I’ve wondered often on this trip, where is that place for me? Like Berry, who returned to his Kentucky home after his sojourn in New York City, am I to return home to Canada? Is that where I’ll be at peace?

My next stop was Henry Horton State Park in Tennessee. 

Nashville and its surrounds seemed to have an overabundance of donut shops, antique stores and Civil War sites. Had my daughter Alison, or my brother David, been with me, we might still be there. On my way into the city, I spent time at Parnassus, the bookstore owned by the acclaimed writer Ann Patchett (Bel Canto is my favorite). Of course, I bought more books. The memoir, A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas is excellent. I’m part way through Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason and I’m looking forward to reading The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell.  Not being a big country music fan, I chose to attend the Nashville Ballet’s production of Attitude, a trio of new works. The third piece, In Many Ways, was choreographed by Jermaine Spivey, a Baltimore School of the Arts graduate. In describing his piece he used the words–creation, organization and reduction. The production was very technical and, while I enjoyed it, I know that I didn’t fully appreciate the complexity of the choreography or the music but I was in awe of what he asked of his dancers and what they were able to do with their bodies. 

After Nashville, I drove to Harrison Bay State Park near Chattanooga. Had I not been driving through clouds and focusing on hairpin turns,  I am sure the views would have been amazing. Signal Point was used by Native Americans and Union troops to relay messages from its vantage overlooking the Tennessee River Valley and City of Chattanooga.

From Harrison Bay, my next destination was Mills River near Asheville where a friend invited me to stay at her tiny home in the Acony Bell Tiny Home Community. As no rain was predicted, I chose the scenic route, following a narrow twisty road with water careening off the cliffs on one side and a rushing river on the other. Later that day, the drive through southwestern North Carolina  proved to be equally challenging with respect to topography but was no longer scenic as a dense fog had set in. I made it, finally, and without incident, to settle  in to watch the longest Super Bowl game in history. 

Before I was out of bed the next morning, my daughter Alison called. She had lost consciousness in the parking lot at her school and was on her way to the ER. Of course, being a physician and thinking the worst, I packed up and got on the road. By the time I had made it to the Virginia border just north of Durham, all of her major tests had returned negative. It was raining, foggy, and getting dark so I found a campsite for the night. As Alison’s night was uneventful, I decided to continue on with my plans for the last 4 days. I met Jill McCorkle, my MFA thesis advisor, in Hillsborough. I can’t believe that in the 5 years that I lived in Durham I’d never visited this lovely town. It was great to catch up on news about Bennington. The program has radically changed. Jill, Amy Hempel,  David Gates and a host of others are no longer on the faculty.  Jill is in the middle of a book tour for her new collection of short stories, Old Crimes. The Audible version is excellent. Jill, with her lovely accent, read two of the stories.

I spent that evening with old friends in Durham, and had a quick tour of Durham the next day. It has changed so much since 2002 when we left to move to Baltimore. 

I then spent two nights in Raleigh with my niece, her husband, and their adorable son Thomas before heading home. 

The drive from Richmond to Baltimore was without a doubt the most anxiety provoking drive of the entire road trip. My shoulders still ache.

And, so, Road Trip 2024 has come to an end: just over 5000 miles in 50 days. I return to work today with 19 weeks until retirement. Just as I told myself on my road trip, I can do this. 

Final updates: 

1. Trump signs: 3 more for a total of 9 (the majority in NC).  One enormous Confederate flag flies near Hickory NC. 
2. #30DayBouquet challenge completed