February 29, 2012 Musgrove Mill State Historic Site

The jasmine are blooming along the highway.  Musgrove Mill is 7 miles from Clinton and 6 miles from I-26, exit 52.  From Spartanburg, take highway 56 past the Deaf and Blind School through Pauline, past fields of black and white cows, black cows, brown cows, past Tyger River Corrections, a turkey farm and then go through Cross Anchor, cross the Enoree River and go around a curve and the entrance will be on your right. You will have just left Spartanburg County and now will be in Laurens County.  This is a revolutionary war site.  The old home of Edward Musgrove and of Mary Musgrove was probably used as a hospital for wounded British soldiers.  The remaining steps are shaded by two giant 200 year old Osage Orange trees (I thought I spotted two more of these trees in the woods as well).  This was an important location when Native Americans forded the Enoree River here.  You  may be able to find points on the banks of the river.
There is a welcome center and picnic shelter. Boofa and I took the trail which follows the river in a big loop around the center and finally comes out at the pond you pass on your way in.  Once there were a series of mills and a bridge across the river.  Now there are none.  There is a place to put in your canoe and there is another trail on the other side, but you have to leave the site, go back towards Cross Anchor about a mile and take a sharp turn back to the left on Horse Shoe Falls Road to get there.

Once, a man who suffered from schizophrenia and had seizures as well was fishing at this little pond, had a seizure and fell into the water.  Three young women who could not swim, risked their lives to rescue him.  I went to Laurens County Hospital in the ambulance with him.  He stayed there in intensive care for two days before he was released.  He survives to this day as good as new.

The pond is stocked with fish and you can fish there without a license.  No charge.

February 26, 2012 Cottonwood Trail Again

Today my son, Michael, came to visit with his two little sons, Zach and Shane.  After a lunch of gumbo and rice, we walked the Cottonwood Trail.  The boys enjoyed watching the hawk who sits high above a field on the posts of power lines to hunt,  hiking on boardwalks above the wetlands where beavers have built encircling dams and seeing the minows and tadpoles swimming below.

February 26, 2012 "The Way", the movie

There have been several documentations of the experience of walking El Camino de Santiago, including a book in 2000 by Shirley MacLaine.  "The Way" is written and directed by Emilio Estevez and stars his father, Martin Sheen.  It is the poignant story of a grieving father who completes the journey begun by his son who dies suddenly after he has just begun the trail.  You watch the travelors hike through the beautiful Spanish countryside, share meals at outdoor tables at auberges (refugios) and enter the hauntingly majestic Cathedral at Compostela.  After the end of the camino at Compostela, they journey on to Moxa on the coast where the father scatters his son's ashes into the sea.

February 25, 2012 Peter's Creek Heritage Trail

A part of the SC DNR Heritage Trust. This trail is in Spartanburg County.  Turn off Cannon's Campground onto Kelly Rd and then just past Ray Circle turn right onto a dirt road that leads to a gravel parking lot.  I went here today with my friend, Maureen, who is going to Haiti next week to work as a nurse volunteer.
There are about four miles of wooded trails and two creeks.  In some places you ford the creek over huge slabs of rock.  There is also a 100 year old dam that has the creek above it and tumbling through it, but there is no longer a pond.

While we were walking, we often heard gun shots.

February 23, 2012 The Play of the Five Beasts

Today I learned from a practicioner of Chinese Medicine, simple movements of the five animals; the deer, the bear, the crane, the monkey and the tiger.  These Qi Gung exercises promote grace and flexibility, strength and balance.  They also embody the essential character and bearing of each animal, so that, for instance, if you are shy or reticent,  you may need to practice the strength and bearing of a fierce bear.  The five yin organs and the five yang organs are reflected in corresponding animals.  This is true also for the five seasons (Indian summer is the fifth) and the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water.

I plan to practice some of these movements before walking.

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February 22, 2012 Congaree National Park

From Downtown Columbia, take Assembly past the Williams Bryce Stadium and continue down Bluff Rd for approximately eleven miles past Coble Dairy, a detention center, several bail bonding businesses, small homes, a pizza restaurant and a bar and lounge.  Soon , you will see an unassuming brown sign stating "Congaree National Park" pointing to the right down Old Bluff Rd.
Slowly it becomes evident that you are entering another world by the completely flat land, the dense forrest of great trees and a side road named "Lost John".  You will come to parking lots and picnic shelters and through the tall trees a barely discernable visitor's center made of dark wood and housing a movie theater, books, hats and Tshirts, National Park Passports, restrooms, soft drink machines and a desk staffed by rangers.  They give me a map and tell me that I can take the dog on any trails except for the board walks.  I ask if it is safe for me and my dog to hike alone and a volunteer says "Yes, as long as the dog is too big for a hawk to dive down and nab him".  "He is." I say.

We take the Sims Trail until we come to Weston Lake Loop.  There we take the left branch and circle the lake, following a still stream, seeing noone except a great blue heron and hearing the sounds of birds and water.   There are said to be wild boars in the woods, brought from Germany years ago for hunting.  We do not see them, but we see what looks like rooted up spots in the path.  There are huge bald cypress trees with their minions of knees that look for all the world like little hooded figures. We startle some ducks who have hidden behind a great fallen tree in a pond and who fly up shrieking through the air. We meet the upper Sims Trail again and return to the Visitor's Center and meet a woman from Edmondton, Ontario who is starting out on the trails.  It has taken us about two hours and I am "in the zone".  The sun is shining.  It is 64 degrees.

The Park used to be called "The Congaree Swamp National Monument" but the rangers say, it is not really a swamp; rather, it is a flood plain.  It is one of the tallest temperate hardwood forests in the world.

Circa Spring 1972 The Peace Pilgrim

I met the Peace Pilgrim around this time in a park in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  She was an uncanny spirit, electric white hair pulled back and tied, dark clothing, the kind of face you see on musicians in their older years.  By this time, she had been walking across the US and Canada for 19 years having started out in 1953.  At one point she would have covered over 25,000 miles, through 3 wars. At this time, the Vietnam War had not ended.  This is her quote:
"I am a pilgrim, a wanderer.  I shall remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until I am given shelter and fasting until I am given food."  She continued to walk until 1981
when she was killed in a car accident while she was being driven to a speaking engagement.

There has to be a kind of spirit present in long distance walking.

La Peregrina de Paz

February 17, 2012 Post Script

I have two large pieces of the tombstone of my great grandfather, Christopher Welsh. They are in my garden supporting a very small bird bath.

When hurricane Hugo crossed the state, it knocked over the orginal tombstone.  My uncles had it restored and these two pieces were left over.  They came to me through my mother who used to have them in her garden.

February 17, 2012 Lullwater Conservation Area, Emory University

This beautiful park is on the campus of Emory University and can be reached off Clifton Avenue or Haygood Avenue.  We easily found parking behind Woodruff Residential Center.  I came here before with my daughter and her sons, Martin and Mathew.  On that trip, Martin jumped up and down on the suspension bridge hanging high above a gulley while we were crossing and scared us.  He promised not to do it today while we were crossing but he did jump a little and Boofa lay down on the bridge afraid to move. Anyway  we had a good walk around a  shining lake.  I found a perfect walking stick and brought it home.

I told the boys that their great great great grandfather had graduated from medical school at Emory after the Civil War.  This is the story:  Before the war, Christopher Columbus Welsh had gone up to White Plains, New York for medical school, leaving his fiance, Mary Anna Ogburn at home in the country in Lancaster County, SC.  We have a letter she wrote to him "at Plains" from which it is evident that he had told her they would not be able to get married right way because a war was coming.  She obviously did not understand and wrote, "I did not think you would forsake me."

He left school, came home and joined the Confederate Army as a surgeon's assistant.  After the war, he finished Medical School at Emory.  He and Mary Anna married and their oldest child was my grandfather.

My mother said that her grandfather would travel on horseback far out into the country to treat the sick.  He would be gone for days and often his horse would bring him home asleep in the saddle.

He did not live to be an old man, but died suddenly in his forties at a medical conference in
Baltimore.  I read in a geneological book, that he fathered a child outside of marriage.  Perhaps Mary Anna had reasons to feel forsaken.

Mathew and I watched the old movie, High Noon, this morning and it's haunting theme song is stuck in my head...."do not forsake me, oh my darlin".

February 16, 2012 Ponce de Leon Ave, Decatur

My grandson, Mathew, and I took Boofa for a walk down Ponce de Leon Avenue.  Fleet Feet Sports has water in a bowl for dogs and more water available for humans, even supplying paper cups.
There were many people walking their dogs.

We spent some time admiring a brown and white spotted basset hound named Filbert and talking with his owner.

When we got home Eleanor took us to Loqma 100% halal Indian restaurant for supper.  We had
delicious chicken biriyani, aloo palak, butter chicken and fresh baked nan with the circumference of hub caps sprinkled with ghee, all the time watching a bollywood movie on the big screen on the opposite wall.

February 11, 2012 El Camino de Santiago

My friend, Mary, came over for brunch and to share her experiences of traveling the Way of St. James two years ago.  I had first read about this ancient pilgrimage a while back in a book of travel essays by women.  Mary traveled with some family members from a location in France called St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, near the Spanish border where they picked up Credenciales or Pilgrim's Passports at a church.  These passports enable the bearer to stay at refugios along the way.  These are simple hostels costing five to ten euros (6 to 13 dollars?) a night.  Often they have a number of bunk beds in one room and cold water showers.  You can stay just one night and you must be ready to go by 8:00 in the morning.  These hostels are also called albergues.

Pilgrims walk (or ride bikes, horses or donkeys) to the destination of Santiago de Compostela and the cathedral where legend has it that the remains of the apostle James are interred.  Compostela means "field of stars" and may relate to the origins of the Way in pagan times or when it was a Roman trade route and travelors found their way by the Milky Way.  The popular Spanish name for the Milky Way is El Camino de Santiago.

At the Cathedral, there is a daily mass at noon  for the pilgrims.  If the traveler has walked at least
100 kilometers they can receive a compostela there for completing the Way.

Mary traveled beyond Santiago de Compostela to Cape Finisterre on the coast where the Scallop Shells which are symbolic of the way can be found.  Many travelers wear them on their clothing or on their hats.

Mary tells me to take two pairs of shoes. She wore her regular running shoes as well as light layers of clothing.  She also took a sleeping bag in her back pack and carried about 20 lbs of belongings with her.They bought dried apricots to eat as they walked, wore hats and sometimes had some cold weather requiring jackets.  You can wash your clothes in the refugios. Your bathrooms are the open  fields or the woods.

No olvides tu toalla.

February 8, 2012 The Riverwalk at West Columbia and Cayce

From down town, go over the Gervais St Bridge and turn an immediate left into the parking lot at the amphitheater by the Saluda River. This is part of the Three Rivers Greenway.  The Saluda and the Broad form a confluence that becomes the Congaree.  Above Greenville, at Jones Gap in the escarpment to the mountains, the Saluda is a rocky stream where people fly fish.

My cousin and her dog, Robespierre, met me here today.  Robespierre is a beautiful dog found abandoned in a rabbit hutch as a puppy.  He is thought to be part lab and part pit. He is a deep red brown with hazel eyes and pit bull ears. He has a very sweet personality.  He and Boofa like each other so much they practically pull us into the river.

This trail goes past classic but new southern houses that face the river with their porches on all three stories.  In this area there are three stainless steele water bowls for dogs, but only if they are gamecock fans. 

The previous governor used to run on this riverwalk when he was not hiking the Appalachian trail or meeting his South American lover.  It is also rumored to be a place of trysting for men.

The weather is chilly at 36 degrees and cloudy.  It even rains a little on us.

After the walk, we go to my cousin's small house which is filled with wonderful things including a painting of a whale by her husband and an oil painting of her children.  While Robespierre and Boofa cavort in the back yard, she makes hot chocolate for us the way our mothers used to make it:
To make one cup, put about 1/4 cup water into a small sauce pan. Add about one tablespoon of cocoa, the same amount of sugar  or a little less and a very small pinch of salt. Stir while bringing to a boil, then add about 3/4 cup of milk.  Heat, then add a little vanilla flavoring.

Later we browse at the Habitat Restore nearby.  The Columbia Chicken Man sells his paintings here.  These paintings are of fanciful elongated chickens.  Our favorite here is a very large one of what looks like a chicken bride and groom dancing happily at their wedding.

In the car on the way home, I am trying to learn Spanish by CD:

Los colores: amarillo, azul, blanco, gris, marron, naranga, negro, roja, rosa,verde.

February 6, 2012 Boofa, My Walking Companion

February 5, 2012 The Mary Black Rail Trail

This trail was built along the old course of the train rails between Pine St and Union St.  It is 1.8 miles long so that if you go down and back, you will have gone 3.6 miles.  When it was first built, there were some assaults to walkers and runners. A year ago, I returned to my car and found the windows of neighboring cars smashed.  Now there are cameras at some points and occassional police patrols.  Recently, this small city was named the 8th most dangerous in the U.S.

When Boof and I begin the trail it is foggy, damp and 51 degrees and when we return it is sunny and getting warm.

There are the aromas of pork barbeque from a restaurant on Pine St as well as the perfume wafting from the plant that makes potpourri nearby.

I have walked here perhaps 200 times.  There are regulars:  families, a man in a wheelchair who walks his dog, a runner with a dachshund in a child's stoller, an Asian runner who wears the rubber shoes that have toes, housewives, college students and my favorite, a petite white-haired lady who wears an Epcot shirt and walks 8 miles every single day.

Two Christmases ago, I came out at the break of dawn when there was no one around and decorated a tree  along the path with Christmas ornaments.

I plan to do that next year too.

February 2, 2012 The anniversary of Jill's death

My sister, Jill, died of breast cancer on this day when she was 42 years old.  We were painting our mother's kitchen when she announced that she had found a new lump and it was different.  She knew from the beginning that it was ominous.  She had had benign cysts before.  She had to talk her doctor into getting her a mamogram.  The surgeon said that he had gotten it all.  And then the cancer came bubbling up in the scar tissue.  She was given two years to live.  She asked me to cut her hair before the chemo.  Then before she went to Duke Hospital to have a bone marrow transplant, she had us over to her house for a cookout.  I was a perfect match for her platelets which had to be replenished after her bone marrow was irradiated.  Her husband and I brought her home on Christmas Eve. "They have killed me", she said. She lived until February 2.  They don't do bone marrow transplants for breast cancer anymore because they don't work.

I have a purple crape myrtle in my yard that blooms on her birthday in July. 

I can walk in her honor.

February 1, 2012 Post Script

The bumper sticker on the black pickup in the Canal Park parking lot says:

"Save an elk.
  Shoot a land developer."

February 1, 2012 Columbia Canal and Three Rivers Greenway

You can get there by going west on Huger (pronounced like the letters, U and G) and turning down behind the big AT&T building. The Columbia Water Works is on your right.  On your left looms the remaining bulwark of the Broad River Prison where the serial killer, Pee Wee Gaskins, once lived.
My daughter, Eleanor, helped film a documentary of the prison while she was in graduate school. She was not, however, allowed inside.  No women were allowed inside when there were still inmates there.
First Boofa and I cross the bridge over the canal.  Now we are walking west with the canal on the right and the Congaree River on the left.  There are many rivers ending in "ree": the Congaree, the Wateree, the Enoree.  The canal is smooth and the color of green tea, like the river that runs through Tokyo, Ocha No Mizu.  A few weeks ago, it was a golden brown like molassas spun with butter, but now there is more green on the banks and trees, reflecting.  The Congaree is wide and full of rocks.  Workmen are trimming the edges of the grass. There is the pungent smell of green onions.

There are two double crested cormorants perched on rocks opposite each other down in the
Congaree.  A gagle of Canadian Geese honk and sputter around the rocks.  A sign alerts to Alligators.
The canal was built in 1819 to connect the Upstate with the Midlands and the Low Country. Its' use declined with the coming of the raidroad around  1840.

Trees here are strung with Spanish Moss.  There is a mother and daughter roller blading, a few bicycles, a Congressman running.  Some dog walkers.
  At one point there are three supports standing in the water of the canal (now the bridge has abandoned them).  In the distance they look like identical batmen thigh deep in the water.
A great blue heron flies up onto the bank. A duck paddles along.

And now a very long train rattles its way east on the other side of the canal.
Approaching the Broad River Bridge, there is a foot trail down to the Congaree where you can fish.
"Don't kill the snakes" a sign says.
After a four mile walk, we return to the car.  On the car radio, Lewis Armstrong is singing "It's a Wonderful World".