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| It held its wings out like that the whole time I watched it. I don't know why. I hope it was for the pleasure of feeling sun on feathers. |
Sleep was slow to arrive on Saturday night, but the view from my bed Sunday morning had me up early, just to look. The world was emerald and azure and golden, and the nieces born after my mother’s death were just a few days’ drive away. I wanted to be up and doing, and drinking kale-based power shakes for breakfast. With the shake glass washed, and many thanks and hugs and good wishes, I left A.K. and J. and pointed the Honda into a beautiful, breezy morning.
An hour and a half later, I pulled over in a parking lot and fell
asleep in the driver’s seat, the first nap of the trip.
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| We get it, thanks. South. Moss. |
The first leg of this drive was north and east across Florida, on a
secondary road. I saw horse farms and
lots of them, and fields growing what looked like blueberries – but don’t they
like a colder climate? – and probably landscaping plants; flowering bushes,
short trees, hardy shrubs. I think there
are orange groves around here, but I didn’t see anything that looked like the pictures
in juice commercials. The Spanish moss
continued everywhere, and in fact got more abundant. And in fact got excessive, hanging from every
branch like those fat tassels on the curtains in Victorian-style bordellos (as
I have seen them in movies, that is); swinging from utility wires like ZZ Top
beards.
In the early afternoon I pulled into a big public park, ready to
picnic. Turns out it was not a big
public park. There was a moon-bounce set
up, but instead of a lunar landscape it was decorated as a sports arena, with
all kinds of balls illustrated on its bouncy walls. I moseyed about, looking at the playing
fields and the not-especially-gracious garden design, and took a seat at a
picnic table with the hummus A.K. and J. had sent with me. A group of young men came into the park and
started a game of catch with a football; oddly urban-looking adolescents for
the environment. They were all skinny,
almost all wearing sleeveless t-shirts and below-the-knee shorts, and mostly
wore their hair very short, like Eminem.
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| Not-especially-gracious, but nothing along this stretch of highway seemed to be. |
Another, smaller group crossed the grass and settled at a table near
mine, and one of them came over to me.
He was heavier than the others, older and somehow calmer looking, with a
soft, gentle face. He asked whether I
was okay, and what I was doing there, and I explained about the public park
where I could picnic. He explained that
this wasn’t a park, but said it was all right for me to stay, and recommended
that if ‘anyone’ asked what I was doing I should say I was waiting for ‘a
visit.’ He closed by saying, “Just be
careful,” as he walked back to his table.
After I finished my hummus, I stepped over to his table, thanked him for
his help, and asked if he could tell me what the facility was. It’s a rehabilitation center, he told me, but
I thought it more tactful not to ask what kind of rehab. As I drove away, I noticed the next building
on the highway was called “Florida Youth Ranch.”
There were all these mournful notes in this day – A.K.’s family ploughing
through leukemia, Bea’s daughters discovering mourning, boys needing to change
their lives at 17, and this light, quiet note of letting go of ten years of
love and grief that was with me, mindfully and not unhappily, throughout the
journey. This day, though, was as
fundamentally happy, as thoroughly right,
as the whole trip had been. The universe
and I were in sync, and I felt I was living as I ought, not according to anyone
else’s needs or expectations or values.
That is the happiest feeling I have ever had, I think. Certainly the most contented feeling.
More motorcycles with multiple riders and no helmets. Where did I notice this before? Montana?
I just looked back in this log, and it was Iowa. That was three weeks and something like 16
friends ago.
I was really mystified at not seeing obvious orange groves. The towns, post-Youth Ranch, were called
things like Citra and Orange Heights, but I saw nothing that looked like my
idea of citrus trees. Maybe I just
didn’t recognize them; the first time I saw a grape vineyard I was surprised by
how short the vines were. Maybe the
orange trees were screened by the mossy oaks.
The median strip and highway sides were speckled with little white
flowers I liked. I wonder if they have a
scent, and if they help pollinate the theoretical orange trees.
Outside Jacksonville, I was struck by a particular landscape: a flat river winding through wetlands edged
with pine. The track of the river, its reflection
of the trees and sky, the graceful stolidity of the marsh edging it, reminded
me of a river view from the highway near my childhood hometown. Once, driving across that river in a van full
of high school debaters, one of my classmates called out, “Hands up whose
mother thinks this is the most beautiful view in the world,” and most of the
hands went up, accompanied by girls’ laughter.
I don’t know about the others, but for me it was a ridiculous revelation
that my mother wasn’t a solo weirdo in her affection for that simple
scene. In Florida, a clump of palm trees
by the river broke my reminiscence. We
did not have those in suburban Boston.
I mean this seriously tongue in cheek:
as I crossed into Georgia, another small note of sorrow emerged into the
day. The welcome sign noted that the
state is the home of the 1995 World Series champions. Like, in 2013, that’s what the sign says.
There are a lot of wetlands in this northeast Florida/southeast Georgia
area. Lots and lots. The marsh grasses remind me of the prairie
grasses of South Dakota, without the deranged wind. They’re different colors, too, which may be
the grass or the season or both. They’ve
got less green, more yellows, and lots of purples. The lack of wind emphasizes their rootedness
in mud and ooze; their stolidity. The
prairie grasses certainly didn’t seem ethereal or ephemeral, but they had more
of those qualities of the wind element.
Marsh grass is a little water and a whole lot of earth. I suppose both of them sometimes catch fire.
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| The Inn had hosted a wedding the day I arrived; smokers got the courtyard. It still smelled. But so beautiful to see! |
Driving into Savannah, a city renowned for its grace and eccentricity,
I got to tour the every-small-city, dingy-townhouse and garbage-strewn alley
section, reminiscent of the outskirts of Chattanooga, Camden, Richmond. It’s a useful grounding in reality. I appreciate the romance of the road, but I
revel in the sanctity of truth. If I had
to choose just one, no contest.
After checking into the upscale B&B that my credit-card points got
me, right on Forsyth Park, I walked through the lovely historical city, through
parks and past gingerbread houses and by statues celebrating a lot of very
martial people. We tourists clustered
along the Savannah River, where we could gaze northwest and see a modern
seaport with a lacily industrial bridge, and look southwest and see candy and
postcard shops, and sit down and listen to Walter Harris play guitar and
sing. He was in ‘Forest Gump,’
apparently, and his voice is surprisingly quiet. Walking the mile or so back to the hotel, I
thought the city surprisingly quiet overall.
I expected more parties and music.
Maybe not on Sundays...
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| Seaport and elegant bridge. |
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| Walter Harris by the river. |
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