Since we've been slow to write about our experiences since Christmas in Indiana, we've decide to wrap the whole South into one post. It may seem like a lot, but there were a lot of overlapping themes throughout our travels in these states. I think, looking back, we've been processing them more as a big congolmerate and less like individual experiences becuase there were so many similarities and it just makes sense to present them that way.
After leaving Florida, we headed North as close to the coast as we could with the intention of doing what we did on the West Coast: following along the coast and enjoying beaches and the sun-on-horizon experience. After a little bit of driving, we realized that this side of the country is less defined coast and more coastal swamp, meaning the closest road to the coast doesn't sport much of a view.
Our first Southern stop was Savannah, GA, a hopping historical city that had come recommended to us by a number of people. It's a truly gorgeous city, with litte parks sprinkled throughout and an obvious appreciation for history and architecture. The little parks were full of Live Oaks, a type of oak tree that looks nothing like one in the leaves and that is the host for a number of hanging plants like spanish moss. These old trees covered in moss give the city an anatiquated look, really driving into the mind's eye that this place has been here for a while.
It was here that slave history really hit me hard. As a white person, my childhood wasn't filled with stories of great-grandma who was owned by Mr. Johns in Georgia. I'm not constantly reminded that the color of my skin makes people think something, usually negative, about me without any understanding of where I've come from and what I've gone through. Growing up overseas showed me what its like to feel like an immigrant and a minority, but even then I was a desired minority with "beautiful white skin and blonde hair." But here in the US, it's a totally different story. Black people were forcibly brought to this country to work for someone until they died. And their children were forced to do the same. Reading the plaques around this city about the slave trade made my heart ache for people I never knew. And I hurt even more when I realized that for every plaque or statue dedicated to the slaves and their families, remembering the atrocities they suffered so someone could have wealth, there were 20 more dedicated to the soldiers, commanders, ships, and ideaology of the government which fought to keep them enslaved. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to be a black person who goes to Savannah and finds that the city there honors those who fought to maintain slavery more so than the backs upon which it was built.
Want an example? This statue, one of the only on the main riverwalk of Savannah that had anythig to do with honoring the slaves brought here unwillingly, had a plaque under it's description stating that it was commissioned by use of a loan from a local bank and that any donations directly to the bank from which the loan was drawn would be much appreciated. Guys, the statue commemorating the slaves that died in the bellies of ships who were brought to Savannah to be owned like horses wasn't even paid off! Meanwhile, the four monuments to Confederate soldiers and commanders, the WW1 and WW2 monuments, the monument to the Haitian fighters, and every other monument there appeared to be fully funded. This may not mean anything to you, but to me is was a stark reminder that not everyone in this country is treated fairly, even in rememberance.
I'm conflicted here. I don't want to alienate you, my readers, by going on about how frustrated I was by the obvious inequality in represenation, which I'm sure to some of you seems trivial and not very note worthy. I don't want you to not read it beacause I talk about depressing and negative things. But to my other readers, who are genuinely interested in this country and how Corbin and I see it, I want to be true to our experience. Savannah was a beautiful place. There were art galeries and live outdoor music. There was delicious smelling food and a culture that seemed laidback and welcoming. There were tons of green spaces and interesting things to see and look at and the buildings were old and gorgeous. Hell, Corbin even realized that one of his beloved video games was set in one of the alley ways in Savannah. And in spite of all these wonderful things, all the beauty, all the art and history, I couldn't forget that inequality. And like a shadow, that realization followed us throughout the South.
We continued moving up the coast into South Carolina until we found a place to park and sleep in a wildlife preserve, if you could call it that. Sure it had the federal designation, but it was filthy and I couldn't imagine any sort of wildlife being preserved there. Corbin and I generally pick up any trash we find in the forests in an attempt to be good stewards when others aren't. But South Carolina beat us. We couldn't possibly pick up enough trash. It seemed like it must have been a favorite pasttime of the locals to see how perfectly perched they could get their styrofoam cups in the branches of a tree. It was easy to become frustrated, but we had to remind ourselves that there is an inequality here too. People have been living here and dumping their trash in the woods since before the government came and designated it a refuge. From what we understand, the land is there for their use and disposal, it's not to be protected or respected. Also, as much as we want to believe that recycling is a common nationwide pheomenon, its not. Rual America is a whole different animal than lovely Colorado. Is that any excuse? No. But it helps us not get so angry and instead think about what would need to happen to change the phenonmenon in this part of the country that we know so little about.
We eventually ended up in Francis Marion National Forest in South Caronlina for some camping and hiking. Fun fact: Marion, IN is named after the same guy this park is named after! Mr. Francis Marion is also known as the Swamp Fox, being one of the fathers of modern guerrilla warfare, and also this plas is swampy. Makes sense to me. Anyway, we'd been discovering all through Florida that National Forests and other public lands often times were civilized before they were federally protected. This means that finding camping in a public lands is a wee bit harder than out West because once you get into the middle of the green, bam, we're in the middle of a small town.
Thankfully, Francis Marion wasn't too terribly hard for us to camp in without bothering the locals, but we quickly found another difference between western public land use and southern public land use. Turns out, if you want to just hike, you will find a shortage of developed foot traffic trails in the South. However, there are tons of roads and trails for offroading vehicles like ATVs, dirtbikes, horseback riding, and mountain biking and even more former fire service roads that have since been closed down that can be used for hiking. We did as much of this kind of hiking as we could here before pushing on North.
We were planning on staying towards the coast and going up through Charleston in South Carolin and well into North Carolina before cutting West to visit some of Corbin's family. But, having learned our lesson in Florida about trying to find something better without there being any reason for it to actually be better, we decided to just head straight for Asheville, NC area where we knew that the active outdoor community would mean well kept national lands and less trash. Also, we had family in the outskirts that we wouldn't have to rush to if we were in some nearby forests.
We spent two nights in in Pisgah National Forest near the town of Bernardsville near an equestrian trail and campground. Pisgah is a beautiful national forest North of Asheville with a plethora of hiking trails. The downside was that most of the roads leading into the heart of the forest and the majority of the hiking were closed for "winter conditions" even though it didn't get below freezing at night. Regardless, we found ourselves a little trail following a creek and went for a nice walk in the woods.
It was amazing to be back in mountains, let me tell you. Sure, the Appalachian range isn't very grand compared to the Rockies we call home, but damn, it felt good just to be on familiar terrain and feel some minor altitude and less humidity. These mountains are especially stricking compared to the Rockies because they're mostly deciduous and covered in moss and ferns with pines interspersed. We followed the trail, taking the less worn forks that we came to until Corbin stopped mid-step and said, "hold my beer." Okay, he didn't really. He did stop me and say, "I'm gonna go swing on that vine" while I sat my happy little booty down for a snack. After eating my fill of an orange and watching Corbin swing to his hearts content, I decided I needed to have a peice of the action and took my turn on the vine. Turns out, vine swinging is really fun and only mildly dangerous, as Corbin discovered when he misdirected his swing and smacked right into a nearby dead tree!
The trail eventually dead ended near some small waterfalls and a beautiful natural rock shelter, which someone had lovingly built up an exterior rock wall and a perfectly placed fire pit for reflecting heat into the shelter. We sat on a rock and enjoyed a couple trail beers and the sunshine and greenery until we grew weary of sitting and decided that we wanted to camp in the rock shelter our second night. As such, we made our way back down to where we parked the truck to grab some food and bed rolls.
Let me back track a little here. When we parked Sherpa to go on this hike, we did so next to a private road and thought to ourselves how lucky those people are getting to live in the middle of a national forest and admired the beautiful structures we could see across the creek. And while we were hiking up to our vine swinging, we passed a lady walking with a man who greeted us on the trail with an emphatic "Enjoy!" Now, as we neared our parking spot on our way down, we saw the same couple just down the private road and decided to ask them about the property to find out what it was. And boy did we find out.
The couple was standing next to a vehicle when we approached, and once they acknowledged us we posed our inquery about the place. The man, who was wearing a felt hat that vaguely resembled that of an elf, excitedly asked us to wait for him to finish his conversation and he would happily answer our question. After another few minutes passed, our lady departed in her vehicle and the man came back our way with a noticeable bounce in his step.
"This is a sanctuary." He said, wide eyed and with an intensity I can't say I've ever whitnessed in another human being. "A sactuary for what?" Corbin asks. "It's a SANCTUARY!" He says, more emphatically but not really illuminating the meaning for us. He offers to show us around even though technically you're supposed to schedule tours online with the man who owns the place, who also happens to be wintering in Asheville to the South.
"I'm Mark. Marky-Mark, you know what I'm saying." He says, extending a friendly handshake. We both shake his hand, and Corbin replies, "Nice to meet you, Mark."
"Marky-Mark. You know? Everyone just calls me Marky-Mark. It's no accident that you came here today. I saw you on the trail, and I could feel it about you, you're supposed to find this place." Marky-Mark says staring into mine and Corbin's eyes. "This place is magical. I'll show you!"
Marky-Mark proceeded to show us around the entire compound, showing us each of the little private bungalows that people rent out during the summer for their spiritual get away. he told us about the fairies that he sees in the tress and grass and pointed them out to us asking if we could see them. He wasn't surprised that we couldnt, and proceeded to tell us about how he used to just think he was seeing things until he came here and followed his destiny to becoming a shaman and the peace keeper between the local fairies and the Cherokee Little People.
There was a beautiful bamboo grove, little single person huts for praying or meditating, larger single or double bed bungalos, almost all open air and obviously built by hand, but beautifully done. Our favorite was the field stone house, which was nestled up to the creek and boasted a dungeon feel about the sleeping quarters. There was the big main house, where Marky-Mark lived in a room the size of a walk-in closet and the communal kitchen and indoor space were. There were circular meeting places, some centured around a stone or fire pit, others around a large crystal or nothing. There were little buddah statues and celtic symbols everywhere. Marky-Mark with is pinpoint pupils showed us around, showing each place which was in its own right the "most magical" place on the grounds and telling us his life story and how he came to be here, Mountain Light Sanctuary.
I'm not going to lie, I was disappointed when "it wasn't meant to be" due to his computer not functioning properly, that we didn't get to see his photos of the faires. And as oddball and out there as Marky-Mark was, he was a genuinely kind man who brought us into the place he loved most in the whole world and showed us a little of it and what it means to him and the people who visit. He told of Pachamama and how the guests often commune with mother earth through various natural mediums (read: magic mushrooms, Ayahuasca, and the like) but it is whatever the person who is there needs to to be and that no one comes there by accident, and all leave with some greater understanding. He offered us a place to park for the night, by donation if we chose, and after we declined, he encouraged us to meditate in one of the circles before we left.
We departed to Sherpa, and decided that we'd camp back at the equestrian campground instead of the rock shelter up the trail, as we realized that the building up of the shelter was likely Marky-Mark's doing and we weren't to keen on having him stumble upon us in the middle of the night. It was an odd experience, I wont lie. Corbin and I are highly skeptical people but can appreciate it when people find their own meaning in life, even it if is ridiculous. At the very least, we got a new saying out of it: Hachatchatchacha! This was a sound Marky-Mark made anytime he was excited and it was often accompanied with a slight one legged bounce. If you'd like us to reinact if for you sometime, we'd be happy to.
From Pisgah National Forest we headed back East towards Morganton, about an hour outside of Asheville to visit with Corbin's Aunts and Uncles who live in the the area. Corbin and I are for some reason totally inept at taking photos with the people we're spending time with. We've been bad at it forever, but it's especially noticeble when we're blogging about the time we spent with our friends and family and we're looking for a photo to use, and lo and behold, we don't have one. I think it's cause you don't have to ask trees to take a photo with you, but to us it just feels weird to ask for a photo. Don't ask why, we don't know.
We spent a day and change with Corbin's Uncle Chris and Aunt Carol, who literally just moved to the area mere days before we arrived. We walked around their new town with them, caught up on family gossip, and learned about how they're liking their new home. After that breif visit, we headed just on the other side of town to visit with Uncle Dan and Aunt Linda. We went for a drive up into the Linville Gorge area, where Uncle Dan's son has propery, and he showed us some of his favorite spots in the area before we returned to the house to gorge on Aunt Linda's cooking. And while the visits were short, these visits are always really wonderful because often times we don't have enough time to really connect with our family members when we see them once a year for Christmas. Getting to spend time with family in their element and outside of the stressful holiday to-do is an eye opening experience, to say the least.
From Uncle Dan and Aunt Linda's house we took off towards the mountains in Pisgah National Forest again, this time with the Blue Ridge Parkway and some suggested stops from the family. We spent the day following Linville Gorge, going for a hike in Linville Falls, and taking in some breathtaking views. I mean, look at it!
We had planned on camping that night in Pisgah again, but ran into some sad trouble with Sherpa. While I was driving down the Blue Ridge Parkway, I was having a hard time not gawking at the beautiful vistas that abound. And, at one point, as we've all done at some point in our driving career, I crossed the solid white shoulder line while looking the opposite direction at the scenery. As I swerved back onto the road, an incredibly loud thud/crash filled the cab, and I was certain that I had busted a tire or broke the wheel hitting a ditch on the side of the road. I pulled over as soon as I could safely, and at first nothing seemed wrong, until we saw Sherpa's passenger side back door with a huge dent in it. Corbin was sure that it must have been that I was driving too close to the mountain side and just hit it, but I know for a fact that even though I was driving distracted, there was a grassy shoulder between the road and the rock face and there is no way I crossed the whole damn thing.
But being upset and not wanting to deal with it, I urged that we were running out of daylight and make our way to our campsite instead of figuring out the gorey details of how I managed to damage our beloved Sherpa, even if only cosmetically. So off we went, driving down the windy road, my tear-filled eyes dilligently watching only the road in front of me until I turned to Corbin and asked if we could go back to the scene of the incident and find out what happened. I couldn't live with myself until I knew whether or not I was just a totally horrible driver.
And so we drove back to look. And sure enough, I didn't run into the side of a mountain. Instead, some recent rock fall was hiding in the grassy shoulder, and based on our investiagation a perfectly shaped tetering chunck of rock had been resting just to the side of the solid white line and when I ran over it, it jumped up and bit Sherpa right in the door. We moved it away from the road and then decided to photo graph the half-culprit making Corbin quite sad before we set out towards camp, again.
On our way to camp we had a pretty important moment on our trip. One of the things we were looking forward to doing was visiting our favorite FoCo brewery's, New Belgium, new Eastern brewery in Asheville and go on a tour and see how they went about transfering a very Colorado atmosphere and culture into a new home. By the time we had finished driving back into the mountains to find out how I hurt Sherpster, their tours had already come to an end and by the time we'd get back down to Asheville, they'd be an our from close.
We talked about the various compromises with life we could make to try to get the most of what we wanted within the limitations that presented themselves. We could sleep in Pisgah again and go to New Belgium in the morning, but we'd likely want to stay late if we took that route. We could drive into town, have a beer to check it off the list and then head to the southern mountains we had been planning on camping in to begin with. Or, we could just go tonight and see how it feels and decide from there. We chose the third option for a number of reasons: 1) In lieu of the day we had, we could both use a beer, regardless of if it were on a tour or not. 2) We didn't want to get a late start on a hard deadline for visiting friends in Atlanta and Aburn. 3) After the hard lessons that trying to force our schedule had taught us, we decided this would be a prime chance to practice being open to what the trip brings us. Maybe the brewery would suck, and we decided it would be a waste of time to do a tour. Maybe it'd be such a welcoming change of pace and personality and maybe take the edge off of the nostalgia we had of our old Fort Collins lives. We wouldnt know unless we tried, and we're so glad we did.
Walking into New Belgium Asheville brought us a sense of peace and excitement to experience something familiar but somewhere different. It felt homey, but new. What really made our night was when we handed our IDs to the gentleman behind the counter who, upon seeing where we're from, yelled out "OH YEAH, FORT COLLINS IN THE HOUSE!!!!!" and shook our hands and welcomed us "home".
Not to get sappy, but we needed that in our lives right about then. We'd just had a time in Florida which had taught us a number of difficult lessons and then after a string of disaapointing stops. These were starting to wear on us, as if the world were trying to tell us that we weren't welcome here and that we should just go home, dammit. And when the rock fall hit Sherpa, it really took the wind out of our sails. So to have someone, a complete stranger, be that excited to see us...it just made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Mike was our brew buddy with such the big welcome, and after chatting with us and buying us a beer, we decided to go out on a limb and ask Mike if the lovely folks behind the counter if they'd take a photo with us to commemorate our memorable experience. And they delivered! Afterwards, we chatted more with Mike and learned about how he had been applying to work for New Belgium every year of a decade and was living in DC when they began looking for employees for their Asheville brewery. He relocaated for the job and also was able to buy himself a little piece of North Carolina heaven and build up his farm. We didn't get a chance to visit Folly Farms, which was a bummer because it seems like exactly the kind of life Corbin and I want some day, but to have a stranger be so welcoming to invite us for a visit and encourage us to come back to the brewery for a tour, just really gave us that sensation of "home" that has come up a number of times in our travels.
I could go on and on about how visiting New Belgium in Asheville made us feel but I wont, other than to say that as per usual the people were incredible, the vibe wonderful, and the beer delicious. If you're ever in the Asheville area and want to have a taste of Colorado, stop by, they'd love to have you.
I mentioned earlier that we had a pretty tight schedule moving into Atlanta and Auburn for a good visit with a former professor and my highschool best friend, Kat, respectively. We were looking forward to these visits as neither of these friends had I had the pleasure of seeing since I had graduated from IU, and much has happened since then making for a fulfilling session of catching up. Our first visit brought us to the Atlanta area where we spent a couple days visiting with Professor Lindley, a former professor of mine from school, and his lovely family. It was a great time, spent talking about life and how we perceive its passing differently and the ways that the world has changed and how we think it may change in the future. We also explored some of the surrounding natural beauty at Sawnee Mountain (and some profound sharpie graffitti) and atop Stone Mountain. It was nice to be able to get some outdoorsy time while visiting such a large metropolitan area.
Atlanta was another city in which I struggled with the racial/cultural phenomenon. While visiting Stone Mountain we happened upon a displ ay of the various changes that the Confederate flag underwent during wartime, showcasing it's final "perfect" form. I still can't fathom it. As I looked around, several dozen black folks were getting there hike on up and down this mountain. How does it make them feel that this natural feature has been turned into a showcasing of the treasonous war fought to keep their anscestors enslaved? It made me uncomfortable to see a unsuccessful rebellion being so honored and memorialized, and I don't have to deal with the racial tensions left behind by that war in my day to day life. We went into the museum, which was named for the Confederacy but had a wonderfully scientific,ally accurate geologic history of the Earth inside along with a few videos about the Civil War history associated with the area and other Confederacy memorabilia. Ultimately, we decided against viewing the memorial for the Confederate Soldiers carved into the side of the rock and headed back to my former professor's house.
That night at dinner I expressed my discomfort at the intense amount of honor and memorials that the failed Confederacy had at the mountain and asked my professor and his family what it's been like moving to the South from a pretty progressive town by Indiana standards. The most interesting comment came from his daughter, who explained that from what she's gleaned, it's the "heritage not hate" movement: a remembering of what your history is without the hate which inspired it associated with it. And after reading up on the mountain some, I could see how after a century of normalization, black people may just find the place that the Confederacy takes in everyday life as normal and not really think of the hate that it was founded under. But I also can't seem to understand how it can be not about hate when a proposed memorial to MLK Jr. in the Stone Mountain space is protested by Confederate flag bearing people, stating that the Mountain is designated as a Confederacy Memorial, and unofficially, the spiritual birthplace of the KKK, and thus not a place for a memorial to MLK Jr. If that's not based on a hatered inspired by a failed racist regime than I don't know what is. But I don't live there, I wasn't raised in it, I'm not black nor a white person with a Confederacy history. So, all I can do is keep trying to make sense of it all and be empathatic to the humans around me and in whose space I'm visiting and whose lives I'm observing.
After a couple days in Atlanta we headed off to Auburn University to visit with an old friend, Kat. Kat and I were very close friends in highschool but sort of drifted apart a little throughtout college. I had seen her breifly right after graduation in 2012, but hadn't seen her since. I must admit I was somewhat nervous about a visit with someone I hadn't kept close touch with for so long. I know how much I've changed in the last 5 years, and what if it would be awkward getting to re-know someone??? What if she didn't really like me anymore? What if I didn't like her? What if I can't come up with something to talk about? And the normal worries associated with meeting up with someone for the first time in a long time.
It wasn't awkward at all. It was actually really refreshing to be around someone who was just willing to reconnect and not let outdated pasts make things difficult. We had a nice couple days lounging about, took a tour of Auburn University, and talked about life, love, and everything in between, while meeting Kat's friends and getting a taste for what life as a PhD student is life. We had ourselves a very genuine visit, which, truth be told, is everything we're after on this trip. After enjoying reconnecting with Kat and a nice lazy weekend, we set off again on the road, headed for the Big Easy and some Mardi Gras adventures, which you can read about in Part 2.