Wanderlust

More from Georgia…..

June 11, 2008 at 4:11 pm kadams06 Leave a comment

Tuesday, Hard Labor Creek State Park

It’s Nora again, bringing you morning group blogging from Hard Labor Creek State Park, which was a Civilian Conservation Corps project during the Depression. After a much needed break, we finally rolled out of Atlanta Monday morning, through some serious suburban sprawl and at least one unfortunate sharp object that attacked Heather Mooney’s wheel. We also got Megan diagnosed, and although she did break the arm, it’s not nearly as bad as it could be.

We’re in the market for a tandem, preferably a recumbent tandem, that Megan and I can ride from Charleston to New York City, so if you have one we can borrow we’ll pay for shipping!

It’s striking how much wealthier Georgia is than Alabama, and how much development there is. What were recently forests have been converted into tract homes that advertise “granite countertops” and “side by side washer and dryer!” It’s much harder to find covert places to pee, leading at least some of us to semi-traumatic dreams about peeing in public. We spend more time than you would imagine thinking about places to pee, and the development has led to some close run-ins with homeowners to whom we’d rather not explain what we’re doing in their front yards.

We’re moving into Georgia pine forests, on our way to Augusta tracing the footsteps of General Sherman’s march to the sea. Although I thought that the South was just always hot, apparently this heat is more oppressive than usual. It was easily in the triple digits yesterday, and we spent a good bit of time resting in the shade.

It’s been interesting traveling through the places we’ve read about in textbooks, seeing for ourselves the landscapes that are overlaid with the story of this country. We talk as a group about the ways in which we are playing out history, both the valuable, empowering traditions of women and witches and mothers and the negative, debilitating history of mistrust and isolation that is part of our legacy. We struggle with the ways that we are not as good to each other as we should be, and we are working to create a space and a group that honors each of us, our histories and our truths.

Entry filed under: Nora Dye, Wanderlust 08. Tags: .