A new start in life

The year 1984 was another of those pivotal years in my younger life when I was trying to come to grips with the end of one career and way of life, and the hopeful beginning of a new life in just about every way imaginable.  A fresh start.

So there I was, back at Square One in life, so to speak.  What wouldI do that would lift my spirits measurably and give me hope and optimism?  Hit the road.  Travel.  See and explore new places and for awhile and not  worry about the future, because on the road, I discovered, each day is unique and unlike the one before or the ones ahead.  Failures, worries, trials and tribulations were left behind in the dust.  Also, I was inspired by William Least Heat Moon’s unforgettable road trip book, “Blue Highways.” He took to to the road  after his marriage and teaching career fell apart.  How many others have done the same?  I felt I was in good company.

I lived in a furnished room for three months while I did some freelance newspaper writing.  After getting home, and into each evening, I would spread out books, maps and travel guides on my bed and research and plan and get inspired and more excited and full of anticipation as each day passed.

In mid-April of that year, I left my part time job, bid farewell to the modest house I was living in and the forgettable lady who rented the room to me, and headed off on the road adventures that would exceed every expectation I had.  What followed were round-the-country trips in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987.   The last one occurred during the years 1991 and 1993.

Fortunately, and as tired as I was each evening in countless motels, I recorded a journal  entry on the day’s travels in a small notebook for the first two trips and then stopped doing this on subsequent years except for brief and scattered writing.

I keep one of these journals from 36 years ago by my bed to dip into it occasionally.

Here is what I wrote about my first-ever road trip on a three-day drive from Sumter, South Carolina  to my home town of New Orleans.  About three weeks later in early May, I embarked on the main portion of the trip which took nine days as I drove from New Orleans to Seattle.

 

April 12, 1984

Calhoun, GA

I began my trip to New Orleans this morning leaving Sumter about 8:15.    Today I spent most of the time in the mountains of northern Georgia. Green is just beginning to show on trees at lower elevations while those at the top of the mountains and on the ridges are still bare.

The highlight of the day was a visit  this afternoon to Amicalola Falls State Park.  The waterfall here is splendid, with a strenuous hike to the base that is well worth the extra effort.   The view of the falls near the base is awe-inspiring, for lack of  a better word to describe this magnificent spectacle.  I  drove to the overlook at the top of the Falls where I stood at the spot where Little Amicalola Creek, a rushing mountain stream, tumbles over a rocky ledge and cascades a total of 729 feet down to the valley floor  in the park below.    The  creek below the falls winds its way through the park, and it’s quite an energetic and frothy waterway, all motion and sound. Beautiful.

The  road to the town of Calhoun skirts the southern tip of the Blue Ridge Mountains and it’s a very pleasant drive through rolling countryside, all the more imposing in its  simple eloquence now that Spring is here.

 

April 14 1984

Tupelo Mississippi

It  was a glorious day yesterday, with so many sites and so much beauty that I can only attempt to recall some of it here.   Saw DeSoto falls where the Little River drops 120 feet into a large rock-walled gorge.  Later,  in De Soto State Park,  I walked along the river and marveled at its clarity and freshness.  At the beginning of the trail, Indian Falls spills in a slender cascade 20 feet into the creek below and from there to Little River.  This  is such a pristine place that I was reminded more than once of the Chattooga River  in northwest South Carolina; same green, clear fast flowing mountain  water.  Also  saw several varieties of wildflowers,  including one unusual purple variety with yellow markings.

From  De Soto Falls I drove to the Ava Maria Grotto,  a small, quiet park adjacent to a river near Cullman, Alabama,  that contains 125 miniature  likenesses of  famous churches and  biblical historic structures.  All were painstakingly put together by a Benedictine monk who devoted his life’s  work to the project, and who used a variety of commonplace building materials including cement, beads,  marbles,  seashells and other objects.  He  had a marvelous eye for symmetry and detail,  with ever the artistic creative touch.  The whole panorama of the miniatures is quite startlingly realistic.

After this I stopped briefly at  a covered bridge over a nice creek that flowed through tranquil north Alabama farm country. A tiny feeder creek led from a mill pond with the  grist mill  converted into a home adjacent to it.

As the afternoon wore on, I stopped at the Sipsey River wilderness area and walked for a short distance along a sand-filled trail along the Sipsey  It was  so  still and quiet.  Great walls of rock loomed up just behind the river banks. The river  was shallow and green and clear, so shallow it was only inches deep in places as it drifted lazily  down its sandy course. I walked off the trail to photograph a small ribbon of a cascade coming from the rocks higher up and dropping about 15 feet into a small, pebble-filled sink. At the bottom was a little rainbow which added a touch of sublime coloration to the late afternoon wet, brown rock face.

I went through many small towns,  and tried to imagine myself living in some of them. Almost everywhere Spring  is just starting to show up noticeably. Green lit up the  mountainsides adjacent to the valley town of Fort Payne,  Alabama, picturesque with its old buildings and sense of timelessness, much as I felt in Dahlonaga,  Georgia,  where the old downtown historic District has been restored, retaining the old façades and keeping the old-time flavor that pervades the place.

 

April 15, 1984

Hattiesburg Mississippi

Yesterday morning dawned cool with the excitement and expectation of the beginning of the third day of my trip.  Spring has never seemed so beautiful as it did during an entire day on the Natchez Trace Parkway, which is a National Park Service road and park which diagonally spans the entire state of Mississippi. One  enters another world here, totally removed from the restless pace of life  outside the park.   The road is a unique drive deep  into the past.

The Trace  was originally the earliest frontier mail route from Nashville to Natchez and the emerging lands of the old Southwest between the years 1800-1820. Today the parkway offers a view of that age,  a road unspoiled and clean, an abrupt departure from even vestiges of late 20th century America. Mile after mile of countryside unfolds,  ever richer and greener with a gradual dissent toward Jackson in the middle of the state.

All along the way I stopped to read about all roads, Indian and white confrontations and coexistence, old taverns or “stands,” and missionary work in education among the Native Americans, particularly the Chickasaws in Choctaws..

I walked five short Nature trails, each a specialized experience in natural history.  Two of the trails had markers which explained plants and trees and their uses by early inhabitants of the area. One trail, Cole’s Creek, was a fascinating look at the last remnant of a bald cypress/Tupelo swamp converting to a hardwood forest. Another trail led around an oxbow lake cypress and tupelo swamp, a place where  years ago the Pearl River flowed, only to meander into a new and more direct channel, leaving  this area  a remnant of the original river.  The area along the Trace  is permeated with the history and culture of the Indian tribes who lived here and had  to deal on various levels with  Spanish, French, and English adventurers and settlers.  Their presence is everywhere.

Exhausted, but quietly exhilarated, is the way I feel at the end of each day. I think back to the huge Water Tupelo and  White Oaks, the Indian burial mounds, the Chickasaw village site, the Beaver Dam Trail, the wide bend in the Pearl River, and the old 1840 frontier house at French Camp, a tiny town right off the Trace. I can picture the meadows with a little creeks running through them, most with Indian names. I can feel the breeze blowing across the top of the hill as  I walked the trail at Busby State Park  and stood  for a while before a tiny spring the trickles out of the hillside and wanders ephemerally down the slope over which tower hickories and oaks. All these experiences I was able to savor for  only for a short while, but long enough for me to be aware of how special each place is. It was a day full of first-time experiences, and all the fleeting impressions associated with them,  and  time passing too quickly.

.Amicalola Falls in north Georgia