tennessee

Car camping in Lewis County, Tenneessee, just a few miles from the Grinder's Inn site where Meriwether Lewis died at age 35.

back attack

Am back from a pleasant vacation in the Tennessee hills near the village of Hohenwald. I got to visit the sight of Meriwether Lewis' untimely death at Grinders Inn on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Also was privileged to spend a pleasant hour at Colberts Ferry on the Tennessee River in North Alabama. Am reading a good deal about the history of the trace and these little stops helped me appreciate what those people went through sloggin through America's first big highway. We had it easy on the parkway, no traffic, a gas-saving cruise of about 55 m.p.h. for three or so hours down to Tupelo, where the good coffee brews and where a killdeer in an empty downtown lot implored our faithful hound to follow as she hippity hopped away from the debris pile that perhaps held her nest. A hundred ticks on adult and child alike, but pleasant wading in a mountain stream as well as fishing a pond from a pontoon and nobody wanted to go home.

Oh where does the time go?

Found an interesting survey of the 1805 Choctaw boundary as decreed by the treaty of Mount Dexter. The surveyor spends a lot of time in cautious negotiations with Choctaws who aren't happy to see him. The leaders are called Mingos. The Mingo Pushmataha arrives and advises the surveyor not to enter the village up ahead. These Indians did not agree to the treaty, they think Pushmataha is a sell out, the Mingo fears for his own life. The survey goes on and on. They go into Alabama, cross the Tombigbee River and set a post on a ridge marking the corner of Choctaw, Muskogee (west side and east side) and the United States of America (to the south). It goes on and on, with many twists and turns, like the rivers.

The U.S.A. signed nine treaties in all with the Choctaw Nation. The final one, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, 1830, ended the Choctaw nation and sent most of the inhabitants on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.

I have moved into an office on campus to avoid the distractions of home. Now I have two monitors. I can switch back and forth from the surveys to my notes much more easily.

Sally's friend Eddie Mae is staying with us this week. She is in her eighties but is still very sharp and is pleasant company.

Life goes on

Life goes on even though we ran out of money somewhere back along the road. A reasonably informative visit with the physical therapist. Recommended I work at a desk top, since the laptop involves looking down in a way with which the damaged nerves are not happy. One unclaimed desktop still resides in the studio, but the studio is in a serious state of disarray brought about by the housekeeper and his floor-cleaning adventures. So I prop my laptop on a stack of books at a crazy angle on my little table in the breakfast nook and pretend I have a monitor. Tapping through the General Land Office records looking for sections in the Jackson Belt. For the past two days I have been stuck in the swamps and pine forests along the Louisiana state line. I follow along with my Mississippi Atlas and Gazeteer, watching the lonely surveyors and their chain carriers hack their way through the snakey creeks, wondering if they were gonna head home when the War of 1812 breaks out, which is just a few months away, or will they stay on the job. Deputy Surveyor Elijah Pope finds himself in a bad storm and writes “It is extremely remarkable that this reigning torrent of air seems to have lost much of its rapidity in passing from the pine hills on the W. to the east side of the Magachitto. Tho it appears here to be gathering much of its former violence.” A few pages later he mentions “the distance of 65 chains being laid west by the fury of the aerial element…” and he ends the survey with:
“Immortal hope is made a squatter
I wade knee deep in mud +water”
But I don't have time for such romantic distractions. I must move on.

Outside gardenias and magnolias pump out a rich fragrance that makes me feel like a king in the castle. As I walk the kids to extended day along the broken sidewalks and chainlink fences, the mockingbirds and weedeaters chirping in the distance, I sense a Bessemer City kind of vibe, more Bessemer City than Hillsborough or Marion, two other towns of comparable size I can pivot on as referents in the arc of my narrative, and I can't really say what it is that makes it seem this way, other than slight aromas noticed at random through the day. If you didn't notice the huge university just across the highway, you might imagine you were in Bessemer City. At least for now it kind of smells that way.

my summer vacation

lagoon



moss



pretty lady



baby alligator in lagoon



spooky cemetary at the end of the garden path



entrance to Orton Plantation



Haw River flows under 15-501



Weaver Street Market, Carrboro


We spent a fun week at the end of May roaming around North Carolina seeing old friends and generally carousing. I spent a very pleasant and quiet afternoon at Orton Plantation, south of Wilmington, with one of my sons and my brother-in-law. Pleasant late spring weather, spooky surroundings, lagoons, gators, huge live oaks and ghostly wisps of Spanish moss gesturing in the breeze.