The early sunsets of late fall a week ago were spectacular ahead of rain and an upcoming colder weather pattern. The sky was impossible to ignore. It was fiery ribbons one day that twisted and streaked like the breathe of a dragon burning the earth in judgement.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Leaving Athens and heading toward home on Highway 316 was a drive into the ever morphing light.
Photo by me, November 2024.
You would have thought the world was coming to its end at the sun's farewell. The dragon breathe sky became an inverted Rothko painting.
The next day it was late, less than an hour before sunset, when I set out for a walk.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Around a lake I went and passed a foraging doe. To the east, the light reflected on a still lake as I crossed a bridge. By the time I had reached another side of the lake a few miles onward, the sun was long gone over the western horizon.
Photo by me, November 2024.
The last rays of sunshine beamed upward over the hills and across the water. It was a remarkable sight and I stood to look at it in the near darkness. The sun has set on this country, the decaying empire, after the morality play of the last election in which so many people sold their morals for whatever reason. No matter how dark it may become in the next few years as the light retreats, there will always be beauty to find and follow.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Photo by me, November 2024.
The rain came. Wednesday morning broke after a day and night of rainfall. In the half dark and half light of seven in the morning I looked at the water clinging to some of the roses in the rear of the house. They were more beautiful with the water droplets. The extra weight made the bushes bow as if recognizing the coming cold that was going to bring an end to the show of blossoms until next spring. Or I assume such, as one year I had roses blooming in January covered in snow.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Photo by me, November 2024.
In the subsequent cold that I had been waiting on for months, I planted tulip bulbs. I planted them in a couple of beds of existing tulips to fill in some of the spaces for next spring.
Photo by me, April 2024.
The tulips blooming last spring were a joy, but were too sparse for my liking. Next spring, no matter how the world may be, I want to at least have more joyful tulips. I should have twice as many next year.
Over four days I read Donna Tartt's 1992 novel, The Secret History. In 2013 I tried to read her novel, The Goldfinch, but I was not in the mood for it and put it down in the first chapter. The book felt like too much of a commitment at the time. With The Secret History I was absorbed and could not put it down with my feet on my desk and a throw wrapping my legs. It was her debut novel and at times that did show through in the writing as some passages were over-written and the ending drags on and on and on. The book needed a stronger editing hand for certain. By the epilogue, I did not much care what happened to the characters and skimmed some paragraphs. Getting to that point though, I did enjoy the novel. I will have to attempt The Goldfinch again.
I read somewhere that the character of the Classics professor in The Secret History, Julian, was possibly inspired by Claude Fredericks, who was a teacher at Bennington College. Claude unlike the character Julian was a gay man and was once the lover of poet James Merrill. Merrill died in 1995 of AIDS at age sixty-eight. For many years I have had a crush on the younger version of Merrill. He was a beautiful young man. I had not known that he was involved with Fredericks, but I was aware of his relationship with the much older Kimon Friar when he was a student at Amherst.
A young and captivating James Merrill.
James was an accomplished poet and Pulitzer Prize winner like Donna Tartt. Merrill was the son of the founding half of Merrill Lynch that shared his last name. Merrill for such a beauty, had odd taste in the looks of men that attracted him. Neither Fredericks or Friar were much to look at, but Merrill was very much in love with Friar as evidenced in his journals.
At the age of nineteen in 1945 when his romance with Friar is discovered by his mother, James Merrill writes to Friar, "There is one great lesson you can teach me, after teaching me to love. Teach me to suffer."
Despite not matching the physical description of the gay character Francis in The Secret History, I pictured Merrill in that role. Francis and Merrill were both from wealthy Northeastern families and I wanted that character to be attractive. Now that I am aware of his relationship with Claude Fredericks, it makes sense to me. It makes even more sense for him to be that character when you consider that Kimon Friar was Greek and a teacher of Merrill's when they were involved.
Esquire Magazine 2019
While I am on the subject of Tartt and Bennington College, I have been listening to the podcast Once Upon A Time...at Bennington College. I am on episode five and was hoping for some insight into Tartt and her schooling at Bennington. So far it has been the Bret Easton Ellis show and people's obsession with him wearing Wayfarer shoes like it was a milestone in 80s fashion history. Tartt declined to be interviewed for the podcast and I am beginning to think that was a wise decision. Tartt, a fellow southerner born in Greenwood, Mississippi, has no social media, seldom does interviews and keeps a low profile away from the media circus. I cannot blame her.
"It's
funny how the music puts the times in perspective, add a soundtrack to
your life and perfect it." The Japanese DJ Nujabes from Luv(sic.) pt 3 or the extended version
with the sampled Rod Mckuen introduction from In Search of Eros (1963).
In Search of Eros, Rod Mckuen
How anyone ever thought that Mckuen was straight, I cannot understand. Sure he lied about dating women, having children in Europe and called his longtime lover his brother, but that cover art should have given him away. Mckuen is mentioned in my novel Shadow's Gravity during a winter's night conversation between Everett and me in Louisville.
Me at WETbar left, Halo on right. Photos 2006.
I swear I first heard this song in Halo
Lounge in the basement of the Biltmore way back in the mid 2000s when it
was a gay/mixed crowd and it was cool and the crowd pretty. Also, RIP
WETbar from those days. A different life, that nightlife.
Blurry nights. WETbar's upstairs patio had the best view. Photo by me, 2006.
WETbar. Photo by me, 2008.
WETbar. Photo by me, 2008.
A different life that nightlife, but were those years lived by a different me? I would never disavow those years. So many names lost to time, but the faces are all there to be summoned with closed eyes. I enjoyed it then with no regrets and when the lights went up for the final time I was glad it was over. Damn the person who reminded of that Nujabes song and making me miss those years.
"With the whole city fast asleep, out cold
True words seem to rise to the lips, take hold..."
Wednesday, November 5, 1980— Düsseldorf—Baden Baden—Stuttgart
I woke up at 3:00 in the morning and I heard the sad news of Carter losing so desperately to Reagan. It was the first time a president conceded so early. He had tears in his eyes.
I couldn’t sleep and I took a Valium. - Andy Warhol from The Andy Warhol Diaries
Artwork by the late Keith Haring.
Iwas writing a lengthy essay about the election, the sanctimonious behavior of the Democratic Party over the last several years and what it all meant for the good ol' U.S.A., but political obsession is a pointless luxury. I do not much enjoy writing about politics and whining about it is not something I indulge, as I have already shared my opinion on political whiners of all stripes. The 90s version of me in my youth was interested in sitting in cozy rooms discussing politics over coffee, board games and Nirvana with friends. The fifty-something version of me typing onto a screen, still drinking coffee by the gallon, listening to post-punk music and sitting in my house is much less interested in modern political dialogue that intrudes on and divides EVERYTHING. Politics went from a hobby in the 90s to a way of life for far too many people in the world.
Besides, neither party appeals to me. I am not a third-party person; I am an independent. Oligarchs and religious types prop up the Republicans and the Democratic Party is the NPR of political parties that relishes shitting on its audience and wonders why fewer are listening. I stopped listening to NPR years ago and for good reason - I have too much self-respect to be made to feel like I am supposed to be guilty for all of humanity's crimes. Fuck that noise.
Four days after the election, I scrolled past the scorched earth Democratic meltdowns and conspiracy theories on Facebook from
the reactionaries and rolled my eyes. My first thought was, where were
they in the eighties and nineties when people like me were ostracized
for being gay, denied basic human decency, lost jobs, were attacked, were dying of AIDS or could not find a
place to live? Up until now, some people have been spoiled and never
faced loss or hardship until their middle age and somehow they looked
the other way until it personally affected them. I take no satisfaction
in their plight, but pardon me for looking the other way and having little sympathy.
Even in the Democratic stronghold of Athens, Georgia Trump signs were
evident. Trump received 30 percent of the vote there in 2024, up from 28
percent in 2020 and 2016. Photo by me, November 2024.
The outcome of the election was obvious if you were paying attention and did not believe the polls or the media or the online pundits who all claimed it was going to be close. The predictions of a close race were good for subscriptions to Substacks,
newspapers, Youtube channels and for television ratings. Through various sources, people injected the drama straight into their necks and believed anyone regardless of their lack of credibility as long as they told them what they wanted to hear. Reality turned out to be an anticlimactic Electoral College blowout, a downright stomping for Democrats. The majority of the 2024 voters were fed up with the illegal immigration problems and abuses, held the perception that the economy was bad and made it sparkling clear that a change was needed.
August 2024 in Athens, Georgia. Photo by me.
The result was no surprise for those who
get out of our bubbles and traverse the back roads. I felt it coming like my southern accent coming on when I am tired. I grew up in rural Georgia in the 1970s
and 80s and have lived most of my life in this state. Though most of
my adult life has existed inside the city of Atlanta, I still know it from end to end like a long-ago lover in a Paulding County tunnel. In the months leading up to the
election from one end of the state to the other down the two-lane and sometimes one-lane back roads
of the countryside and even on suburban Atlanta streets, I saw more Trump yard signs, flags and
campaign materials strewn in yards than I did for Harris. Forget any notion that Trump voters are shy. I have found that public displays of support are a better barometer of voter enthusiasm than some dude making Youtube videos in his spare bedroom in his underwear or paid celebrity endorsements.
Left to right: Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Generra Clothing, Max Headroom and 80s MTV.
Hillary Clinton's loss was a stunner, which can still be felt today, but Harris losing was not. However, this is not 2016. Shall I consult the Swatch around my left wrist?
My bangs cover my eyes. I am wearing Bugle Boy pants and a Generra sweater. The dystopian cyberpunk television show Max Headroom has been canceled and George Michael, Terrence Trent D'Arby and INXS cassettes are burning up my Sony boombox. It is dark. It is late 1980s dark.
Warhol died last year, Basquiat will die of a heroin overdose this
year, Robert Mapplethorpe will die next year and Keith Haring will be dead in two years. AIDS is the cold, misty fog
that glistens on the surfaces of my thoughts. Always there, always dampening the mood and ready to snatch me. The country has had two terms of Reagan and now it is time for a sequel with George H. Bush. The country elected its
nostalgia candidate.
It is 1988.
What is the explanation for this? I suspect there are several reasons, but one of the primary drivers is the cultural changes in the country and not economic anxiety. Generation X has reached a point in life where they believe the past was better than the present. It seems to happen with every generation that nostalgia for youth and rose-colored glasses are handed out with AARP cards.
Baby Boomers before us were served up their nostalgia beginning in the 80s with movies like Dirty Dancing and The Big Chill. Nostalgia is a big seller for advertisers. Now the music from our youth in the 70s, 80s and 90s is the soundtrack to commercials and movies. The present version of an "oldies" radio station is alternative music, including the 90s grunge era. When I was a kid, an oldies station, like say Fox 97 in Atlanta at the time, played music from the 1950s and 60s. 99X in Atlanta, which played new rock in the 90s and plays "classic alternative" today, is the modern version of an oldies station.
Corey Haim in that terrible movie Dream A Little Dream and Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club.
The eighties were not a bad time to be
a kid, roaming wild with lax parental supervision,
watching Saturday morning cartoons, playing Atari, hanging out in malls, zoning out
to MTV, school shootings did not exist, a gallon of gas was less than a dollar where I grew up and there was the comfort in knowing that mommy and daddy were going to tuck us into fresh
sheets every night. Generation X felt safe, comfortable and free to
be kids without social media and cell phones logging our every moment
and robbing reality from us. We were the last of a kind that had a childhood where technology had its place but did not consume our every moment. Sure, every so often and for a
second I would not mind being fourteen again, nurturing my severe crush
on Corey Haim or admiring Molly Ringwald in everything, but I do not
want to take the country back to that time.
The eyes of middle-class children did not much see or experience the bad aspects of the 80s under Reagan. Many among my generation, Generation X,
believe without a doubt that Reagan was a great man, a god to worship. I intensely disagree for a plethora of reasons. They believe that because they lived through
the eighties with the perspective of children when mommy and daddy took care of everything. As kids in the 80s, Generation X did not have a care in the world and of course life was
easier. It warped some into having a false sense of security about what the eighties were like. They imagine Reagan wrapped in the red, white and blue as a surrogate
father and they view Trump as a throwback to that era. Trump
captured that powerful drug of nostalgia in them and gave them an overdose. What was the 1980 campaign slogan for Reagan? It was the extremely familiar phrase, "Make America great again."
It is a disputed quote, but it is often attributed to Mark Twain that he said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." None of what is happening now is original. The major difference is that my generation is not kids in 2024 and should know better. The consequences are going to be worse than coming home late after curfew. Yet, here we are and where we have been has not been the best either, if we are intellectually honest. Generation X got their nostalgia fix in this election, but governing a country is not the same as organizing a twenty-five-year high school reunion. Who the hell wants to attend one of those anyway or watch Reality Bites ever again?
The gas station scene from Reality Bites in 1994.
Though the gas station scene in Reality Bites is funny. That scene captures so much of the essence of the stupid fun we had without feeling like the world was watching our every move for some accusation of cultural appropriation or a microaggression in which to cancel people. We had the basic freedom of fun. We were an unserious bunch and that was one of our better traits. Political correctness was on the rise in the 90s but it was mostly something argued over on talk shows and in magazines. It was not something that existed in daily life unless it was being mocked.In the strangest twist since, both leftists and conservatives want to police and control speech and ban books.It has become an upside down world where people walk on eggshells and there is such a job in publishing known as a sensitivity reader.
You're right from your side I'm right from mine We're both just one too many mornings And a thousand miles behind. - Bob Dylan 1964
In this deeply divisive era, which has been growing for over the last two decades and coincides with the rise of mass cell phone usage and social media, there are cynical calls for unity, which no one believes as it would require one side to admit it was wrong. Partisans from both sides claim the moral high ground or to be on the right side of history and they can cheer or cry, but it makes no difference to me. I could never trust a Republican having grown up in the times of Reagan, Bush, Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich. I cannot trust the Democrats either with illiberal ideologues who think a country should not have borders, enforce fundamental laws and want to divide and conquer based on demographics. I have no allegiance to either party. It is country over party for me and not the other way around.
This is a watershed moment in the United States that will transform the cultural and legal landscape for years if not decades to come. Hope is all I have that it will not be as bad as I expect and that maybe there will be a few unintended good consequences from it. It is unfair to blame Generation X for all of this election, as most
every age group and demographic showed gains for Trump. Enough voters
across the spectrum chose him and everything he represents and entails
over Harris. This essay for me was my analysis of what I believe is
going on with my generation. On
second thought, maybe I did write a lengthy political essay. Now I can
be a good consumer and buy a tee shirt or hoodie adorned with the art of
Haring, Basquiat and Warhol.
Somewhere out there in January 1989 I am fifteen years old. I am walking
down the sidewalk in Midtown Atlanta on my way to the Fox Theater to
see Duran Duran's Big Thing tour with a friend. It will be my first concert. It will be a special moment in the darkness, like a searchlight through the fog. Thirty-five years later, I will have kept going and will again look for that light. It is what can be done. Or, as Warhol would have done, one could pop a Valium and go back to sleep.
David Wojnarowicz . Gay artist and activist. Died in 1992 of AIDS.
After wandering through an antique show in Atlanta on Saturday for what seemed like hours and not buying anything, we drifted out to Athens and were glad to be away from the crowds. We listened to the Lemonheads album Car Button Cloth as our soundtrack and bummed around.
The other half said that he would be happy to live in the country, "as long as we had a pool."
I was a little surprised he said it, but not entirely. Our house is sort of in the middle ground between Atlanta and Athens, but both us would be okay living closer to Athens than to the other. The landscape has not been entirely chewed up and spit out as exurbs yet between the two cities and there is still some countryside left for pools and happiness. Since leaving Atlanta over three years ago, our lives have gravitated more and more toward to Athens.
We stopped in a bookstore. In the entrance was a table loaded down with the new biography of R.E.M., The Name of This Band is R.E.M.. This is Athens after all and I should have not been surprised, but I did not know there was a new biography on the band. I was intrigued despite the terrible title. They are my all-time favorite band, but is another book about them really needed? Don't we know everything already and they retired long ago. I did like the orange cover. I flipped through it, placed it back on the table and went to look at photography and art books. I'll read it some other time.
Photo by me, November 2024.
It was either the R.E.M. influence or the craving for fried chicken that put us outside Weaver D's. It was closed early and the craving was denied. The last two times we have been there they were closed early. There was nothing fine about that and the disappointment was automatic. The place has always been a little strange and having irregular hours is an odd way to run a business, but they do have good fried chicken. The whole thing is very Athens - strange and somehow excusable.
Photo by me, November 2024.
The college students went to the bars in shorts. The Dawgs were playing in Mississippi somewhere and that I was all I cared to know. It was another climate change November day with temperatures in the middle seventies. Some other time it might get cold again, but in Athens everything operates on its own time and may that never change.
It was time to come north from Fort Lauderdale and while I did, Hurricane Helene was coming north too. She and I were leading parallel lives.
A view from my hotel balcony overlooking the docile waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the day I arrived. A wedding was taking place on the beach that evening. Photo by me, September 2024.
I was in a hotel at North Redington Beach on the gulf coast near St. Petersburg. I arrived two days before the storm and the same day storm chasers and network media swooped in to hype the storm and shout catastrophic predictions. I was aware of Helene, but expected or maybe hoped that she would stay far enough out in the gulf as she headed north to avoid the worst of it. I had been in Florida in the center of a tropical storm before, but not a major hurricane. I expected strong winds and pounding rain if we could stay on the periphery of Helene's track. I was not expecting the end of the world; the internet and television gave me immunity against that way of thinking.
The next morning, a television reporter stood on the beach waving his arms like a hyperactive and malfunctioning windmill before a camera directly in front our hotel. He had forgotten or perhaps was never taught that waving and pointing your hands directly at the viewer is considered a threatening gesture and people will change the channel. He and his crew I had seen in the parking deck the day before and drinking in the hotel bar that night. He needed to hire himself a talent coach, spend less time in the gym and cruising in hotel bars.
I went for a walk along Gulf Boulevard and had coffee. Walking back to the hotel, I was jolted out of my remaining haze of sleep. A sheriff's deputy pulled next to the sidewalk and barked through a loudspeaker about a mandatory evacuation and that everyone needed to leave Zone A. I jumped out of my skin. It was like being warned at a protest that this was an unlawful assembly and teargas was incoming. My phone alerted me next with the same message. The expected storm surge was forecast to be destructive and deadly if we stayed.
Was the world not aware that I need at least two cups of coffee and an hour of quiet when I wake up before I can muster more than a 'good morning'? It was too much stimulation. I blamed that arm flapping reporter for conjuring Helene to come closer.
There was a controlled chaos at the hotel. Elevators beeped, luggage rolled carelessly over toes and the staff scurried about stowing things away. The hotel was closing up and sending all of the guests to somewhere other than there. A quick call was made to a hotel in Orlando and a reservation was secured before the rooms were gobbled up. The retreat inland was on before I even had breakfast or a third cup of coffee. My last moment at the hotel was passing the reporter and crew sorting through their gear. In their excitement I detected that they hoped for the worst, great footage, ratings gold and maybe a promotion to a bigger market. Damn the rest of us. This was their storm of the century... until the next storm of the century.
The night before, Pinellas County locals were overheard at dinner discussing the storm. They planned to ride it out saying it would not be so bad and joked about stocking up on alcohol. These were not young people being cavalier, they were in their fifties and sixties, though it can be hard to assess among sun crispy Floridians what their true ages were. Their misplaced confidence was no doubt based on past storms that just missed them or were not as bad as predicted.
They neglected to consider that the weather, climate and landscapes are not what they once were. Hurricanes are more intense, ocean levels are higher and Florida's coast lines are more perilously populated than ever. Storms of the past were not the best indicator of what the storms of the present were capable of doing.
Photo by me, September 2024.
You see evacuation signs when you travel in coastal regions of the country and you say to yourself that you will never be caught in an actual evacuation. In all of my decades of traversing Florida from Pensacola to Key West I had never been through an evacuation until I was. Hurricane Helene was a category four storm that morning in the gulf and headed to Florida.
The traffic leaving the beaches. Photo by me, September 2024.
Some people were taking the order seriously, at least the out-of-towners like us were, as the hotels closed giving us no option but to leave. We were stuck in a miserable jam through Tampa and I-4 to Orlando was a mess moreso than usual. We exited outside Tampa and took the back roads by the tattoo parlors, trailer parks, strawberry fields, miles of planted pines and people hoping to sell watermelons out of the back of an old Chevy van. It was a tour of the hidden away Florida that tourists do not see. I like to think of it as the real Florida that is swampy, often ugly and crazed by the relentless sun and humidity. The real Florida is not a vacation of seafood, the yachts of Fort Lauderdale, the morning drunks on Duval Street in Key West and sand between the toes, it is a sun beaten dream in a faded 7-11 tank top, broken flip flops and with ass crack showing from cutoffs.
Photo by me, September 2024.
Photo by me, September 2024.
Leaving Florida several days later and heading north to Georgia, there were lines of trucks from utility companies and downed trees for as far as one could see. The damage became more obvious to structures and there was limited gas north of Gainesville and into South Georgia. I thought about the people that rode out the storm on the coast. I saw what became of our evacuated hotel through photos on Reddit. The first floor was washed out by the storm surge and damage had reached the second floor. Cars and boats were washed away like the sand and the beach was much smaller than what I had stood on the week before. If we had stayed and not evacuated we would have been stranded without
power, water, sewer and cell phone service. For the locals that stayed and
survived they likely regretted that choice.
Along I-75 we stopped to take in some of the remaining tacky old Florida
that is getting harder to find with each passing storm and year.
Photo by me, September 2024.
Photo by me, September 2024.
Photo by me, September 2024.
This was the Florida I loved in the 1970s as a cutoffs and flip flop wearing kid when the state seemed like a wild adventure of clear inland springs with mermaids, jungles, dolphin shows and wide beaches with fun sized waves for my toy boats and plastic sharks. It was a wilder, bigger version of the woods behind my childhood home and camping at Lake Allatoona. It was the state before I ever knew what a Zone A was or required an hour of silence and two cups of coffee before my brain worked.
Me falling in love with Florida at Marineland in St. Augustine in the 1970s. Photo by my mother.
What can happen in thirteen years? I asked myself that question as I stood in front of the statue of Chief Sawnee in late March of this year for the first time in thirteen years. The simple answer is a lot can happen.
It was in the fifties as I arrived at Sawnee Mountain late in the afternoon and it was a perfect hiking day. It was a day to walk through the past for me as I had been to this mountain once on a warm February Saturday in my younger short sleeved thirties. I was taking a weekend off from writing my novel Shadow's Gravity and had somehow not gained a pound from when I was a younger man. I had gained the weight of more experience, perspective, memories and countless miles on my legs. Thirteen years can do a lot to a person and a person can do a lot in thirteen years. I was writing my fourth book, had moved out of the city for good, renovated a house, nearly died in 2012 and so much more.
Photo by me, March 2024.
Photo by me, March 2024.
I started up Sawnee Mountain through the naked hardwoods that reminded me
of where I grew up with a mountain behind my house. My mind wandered from the present at the turn of the trail. I was walking
miles of memories as much as I was on the stony trail. The trail curved
through the woods as life - to unexpected places, with unexpected experiences and unanticipated questions.
Sometimes even in a place and in people we thought we knew there are
surprises.
Photo by me, March 2024.
Photo by me, March 2024.
Photo by me, March 2024.
Life and its counterpart death always have a presence in the world underlining our existence in permanent ink and teaching us the seasons of emotion from joy, to regret, patience, shame and pain. One begets the other from the birth announcement to the obituary. Three weeks had passed since someone I was close to as a boy had unexpectedly died. I had spoken at their funeral the following week and they were on my mind.
At the funeral I shared a rambling story of us as boys in the mid 1980s involving him spending the night at my house and us hiking to Elsberry Mountain on a summer Saturday. I talked about how he had to find just the perfect walking stick, how long that took and how he had to have one because I had one. He was competitive, considered a gifted child like me and in this period of our childhood he kind of looked up to me. Though he is gone, the happy and disappointing memories live on with me and others that knew him. I retraced those memories like a mountain trail which my feet had followed before.
Our lives traveled down very different paths as was the case with so many of the people I knew growing up who became strangers. He and I had not spoken in ten years, but one of our last conversations went for hours through the early morning and past the sunrise. We caught up, we reminisced - we were two boys again who had spent so many years together. I had wanted to include him in one of my novels, I planned it and then thought better of it. It was not that he did not deserve to be in them, he did, but the time was wrong. He remains a mountain behind my house hidden among the trees unseen at a distance, but breaking the landscape when viewed up close.
The view from the top of Sawnee Mountain looking to the north. Photo by me, March 2024.
The area known as the Indian Seats atop Sawnee Mountain. Photo by me, March 2024.
We took in the view of the mountain before us that summer Saturday so long ago. With sweat in our bangs we gripped our walking sticks unaware then how many mountains we had to climb, how high they would be or how low the valleys between them. I cannot say or understand what he saw that day or in the decades that followed, not long after, he chose one route and I another.
Me atop Sawnee Mountain. March 2024.
Thirteen years or a lifetime, I looked at the horizon with the same pair of eyes which had seen the hidden mountains from faraway and up close. His death hit me harder than I expected, there was a loss of balance at the edge of the rocks and that feeling has stayed with me. He should have seen the view.
The clouds moved in, the wind picked up and rain was coming by nightfall. I like storms, without them, nothing grows including people.
The number of covered bridges remaining
in Georgia is either thirteen or fifteen depending on the source of
information you consult. I cannot say which is accurate as I have not visited them
all, but I have seen many of them.
Long ago, there were over two
hundred and fifty covered bridges in Georgia and as time and
engineering moved forward, covered bridges fell out of use. Many of
these bridges were torn down and replaced by steel and concrete,
others were victims of neglect and some were lost due to arson. Seeing and driving across one today reminds me of the one I often crossed over Nickajack Creek with my mother out Saturday shopping in the 1970s and 80s. That bridge, which still stands today, is the Concord Covered Bridge in Cobb County, Georgia.
Photo by me, October 2024.
Photo by me, October 2024.
In rural Oconee County in the eastern
part of Georgia is Elder Mill Covered Bridge. It is located a few
miles south of the town of Watkinsville off the Greensboro Highway on
Elder Mill Road.
Photo by me, October 2024.
Photo by me, October 2024.
The bridge dates back to 1897 and was
built by Nathaniel Richardson. The bridge was originally constructed
in a different location in the county. Before being moved to its
current location in 1924 over Rose Creek, it crossed Calls Creek to
the north between Watkinsville and Athens.
Photo by me, October 2024.
Photo by me, October 2024.
The ninety-nine foot bridge remains
functional to traffic and is one of the few covered bridges in the
state that has not been reinforced by steel.
Photo by me, October 2024.
Photo by me, October 2024.
Photo by me, October 2024.
The scenery around the bridge and Rose Creek is pretty in that woodsy rural northern Georgia way and it is worth spending time climbing over the rocks and listening to the relaxing sound of the water. It should be noted that one should be respectful of the marked private property that is adjacent.
A barrier to prevent over-sized vehicles from crossing the bridge. Photo by me, October 2024.
Elder Mill Road approaching the bridge from
the Greensboro Highway is paved with asphalt and the road on the other
end continues on as a gravel road through the woods and by pasture
land. There is room enough for two vehicles to park at the southern
end of the bridge beside the road.
