April 26, 2016 The Drayton Mill Trail, Spartanburg

These are the days, the most beautiful of the year, temperatures from the 60's to 80's, without snow, tornados, blinding heat and rain.  All is green and growing.

This trail is new to me although completed in the past year in agreement between the Milikin owners of the old defunct weaving and spinning cotton mill who have made the mill into luxury apartments. Behind the apartment building and it's swimming pool and up the street, I can see yellow tape out in the woods. tonight there is to be a Shindig with music and art from Converse students on the trail.

This is a black top trail which winds through the green forest for a mile and then connects with the trail at the Mary Black Hospital on Skylyn. There are plans to connect with the Cottonwood Trail and indeed they have already plowed the ground for it.

Along the way a few trees are marked:  White Oak, Black Oak, Scarlet Oak, Sour Gum, Gum, Hickory, Mocknut Hickory.  The first student sculpture is wooden frames hanging in the trees. Some have plastic water bottles.  On the right there are two silver metal trees, then a rough hewn wooden bench surrounded by 20 small rock cairns.  Down the hill from the trail is a stream with a dirt path beside it.

I take the trail until I can see through the woods, a place of torture on the road:  my dentist's office, and then Mary Black Hospital.

Going back I meet a walker wearing a T shirt with the head of an eagle on the front.  She is a native of the Drayton Community and tells me how her grandfather took her to walk at the drained pond beside the trail where one Canadian Goose floats with great dignity. She tells me there is a leak now in the dam which is why it is drained.  She tells me that where the dirt path is, there are springs which at times, bubble up into mud holes.

The beautiful woods of the trail, may be developed into a neighborhood with homes.  She has mixed feelings about her love of the community and the wealthy developers who have come to change it.

April 4, 2016 Canoeing the Lake at Calloway Gardens

Calloway Gardens is about 80 miles north east of Atlanta and Decatur on the edge of the mountains.  It is near the Roosevelt State Park and the  hot springs where the president went to heal from his polio.  It is 17 miles from LaGrange where the founding Calloway had his first department store at the age of 18 and made his fortune.

Eleanor, Mathew and I are driving through the little mountainesque town of Pine Mountain. Mathew, who is eleven, is doing "stand up comedy" in the back seat.  On the side of the road a muscular middle aged man with a golden pony tail is marching back and forth from his baggage and water canteen strapped onto  five packed wheeled carts to another space down the street just a block. One cart has a big white printed sign proclaiming "ON A MISSION FROM JESUS".  The man is wearing an orange safety vest. a white T shirt, shorts and good hiking boots.

At Calloway Gardens and after a lot of discussion, the three of us embark in a canoe onto the lake. We paddle out from a covered stone boat dock and circle the lake, visiting ducks and blooming azaleas on the shore. After an hour, we paddle back into the dock.

We visit the Butterfly House, a beautiful glass green house where there are tropical plants blooming, water vapor misting and butterflies and moths in all the colors of the rainbow, flying and alighting on dark green leaves.  A brilliant blue butterfly is spreading its wings on the back of a turtle and suddenly flops into the water below.  There is a splash and in an instant, it is gone, eaten by a hungry fish.

Going home, we stop, for gas in Pine Mountain where the man on a mission has made almost no progress in moving his carts.  One by one, he slowly wheels them a few more feet down the street.

We eat supper at the little Saigon restaurant near Eleanor's house. She gets Pho for Mathew in hopes the clear soup will help him recover from the pollen.

April 3, 2016 Living Walls on the Atlanta Beltline

Eleanor, Mathew and I are driving on DeKalb Street, passing the Living Walls, the painted expression of a city speaking. Paint on an underpass states: Never Give Up.  We park the car and merge ourselves into the mass of human beings walking, biking and skating the Beltline, a path which will one day encircle the whole of the city.  The world is in bloom and the air is filled with pollen. Mathew is coughing and his nose is running.
My eyes are inflamed.

IT is Spring Break and those families who did not flee to the beaches of the Gulf or the sea islands of the Atlantic are all outside, joyously moving in the warm air.

Today is Hannah's birthday, born on a day when the earth itself is celebrating it's birth. At least here in the Northern hemisphere in South Carolina where it is an all out glorious Spring.