You can easily get there from I-20 (exit 123, go one mile north and turn left) but I came up from Turbeville ( where last night I attended Shane's coming of age event), first a short stretch on I-95 North and then to Hwy 341 West where the land is flat as a friddle, cotton ready to harvest, corn fields replanted with frilly green mystery plants, clumps of tall hardwood around low comfortable homes with porches on three sides. A man walking across a field lifts a single finger wave.
I pass the South Lynchberg Presbyterian church and cemetery, founded in 1854, then Lynchberg with old Southern homes and an abandoned main street. Then more fields and churches and in one wide flat field, a miniature Victorian palace with peeling white paint, lonely and empty now, dogs sitting sentry at the end of long dirt driveways. It is early morning.
I cross I-20 after following a series of signs for the park and turns, then turn right, then left and I am there.
There is a forest of tall oaks dripping Spanish moss, not like the oaks of the low country, but thrusting higher into the morning sky.
I take the board walk trail first, through the flood plain of Lynch's River, the river of my mother's childhood, the name that has lingered in my mind, but I had never seen it.
On the boardwalk, signs tell the history of the broken and fallen hardwoods, clipped off by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. It is a paradise for animals and birds, green frogs, anoles and five kinds of woodpecker, the redheaded woodpecker predominating.
Then I take a trail around the artisan ponds and find the small shell of a yellow slider back turtle which I put in my pocket to take to James.
The ranger, Frederick S., tells me to take the 5 mile Loop trail where the sign says: Road Closed. I am overwhelmed by its' beauty. Along the twisting Lynches River, the bending trees, still leafed with green and yellow, are lacy with early morning sun filtering through them. It is magical. I feel as if I have gone to another time, another place, another universe. But there are prints of horses hoaves on the dirt road and after a couple of miles I leave the river banks and come to a large trap on the edge of the woods, big enough for a black bear or even big foot. It's door is open, but I see no bait. I consider myself alone in the woods with a creature big enough for this six foot square, four foot in height trap. It is a sobering thought. I pass on through the back side of another gate that warns "Road Closed" in the direction I have come.
Soon I come to the youth camp where a group of Royal Rangers and their leaders have spent two nights.
A leader tells me he grew up in the Woods Bay swamp not far from here.
On down the road pairs of horses and riders begin meeting me, four pairs in all. Next I come upon the
Equestrian camps, then the riding ring, and then the regular camp sites.
I find a dead green green snake on the road, still in perfect shape. I will also take this to James.
Back at the office, Frederick S. tells me that the trap is for a wild pig or boar. "I will not bait it this holiday weekend (Veteran's Day is Monday) when the park is so full. We do put the pigs down, but we do it without unnecessary pain to them and we give them away for food to people who ask for them."
I stop at Wendy's off I-20 towards Columbia and order fries and a small frosty. I am back in what is my real world now. A young man in line tells me about the 12 mile Mud Run obstacle course he has run. He has a ribbon with a medal around his neck.
On the car radio, there is a discussion of the films of Andy Warhol, five hours of a sleeping person, eight hours of the empire state building.
Worlds collide.
Note: Lee State Park was built by the CCC , called the Tree Army, under Roosevelt as part of the New Deal in the Great Depression. It's name comes from Robert E. Lee, in Lee County, SC.
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