Week 21 of 26: Up from the South

I got to Savannah early in the evening Monday. I hadn't been there in sometime, and forgot how wonderfully mossy the trees were. I stepped out of the car and into the sticky air. I couldn't stop sweating from the heat or itching from the mosquito bites. My host, Lenoir*, greeted me warmly. He was out on the spacious front porch with his partner's son's girlfriend, Lili*, and his partner's son's daughter, Katia*. Lili, I found out later over a dinner of pig feet, big beans and rice, was half-native Hawaiian -- her mother was part of a Hawaiian touring group, and they met in her father's home state of Tennessee, where she was raised. She went back often to Maui, but hadn't been to the Big Island in a while. Jack*, Lenoir's partner, came home late from a drama rehearsal, and we had a chance to talk before he turned in for the night, very tired from a full day.

Late the next morning, after Jack went to work, Lenoir took me over to the beach on Tybee Island, where we went bike-riding. The sun was high and bright, and there was precious little shade, but it was much cooler by the water than it had been in town. I was surprised that the white sand was fine, wet and compact enough to ride on. It was very wide, too, like the beach at Ogunquit when the tide is out. We rode a few miles north, then came back down through the main street. I noticed they had a turtle culture there, too -- specifically green turtles. I was tempted to stop and buy mementos, but then I realized Lenoir had my wallet in his knapsack -- I didn't have any pockets -- and he was too far ahead of me to get his attention before we'd passed all the shops. I treated him to lunch at Huey's, a sweet New Orleans-style restaurant on the Savannah River among the historic buildings. Have I been here before? Not really, but it sure does bring to mind Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Back at the house, I load up the car and begin the drive up to Hickory, North Carolina.

Again, I arrived late in the afternoon. My hosts, Paul* and Silas*, lived in a very large and beautifully restored home. Wednesday morning, Paul and I had coffee (Silas is at work), and Paul made several suggestions of things to do in the area. I made the 35-minute trip to the town of Blowing Rock, up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The road twisted and turned as the elevation increased, and it was cooler up there than it was down in Hickory. It's another resort town, with with lots of quaint shops, beautiful scenery and people out on a sunny day. On the way in, I sampled salted fried peanuts ... who knew that they wouldn't be greasy, and you could eat the shells? I had a late lunch of cajun-spiced trout at the Speckled Trout Cafe'. Walking back down the street, I was really struck with the beauty of the Presbyterian Church. I picked up some sweets from Kilwin's (including dark chocolate-covered rice crispy treats -- *yum*) to take back to Paul and Silas. I also visited the Blowing Rock itself, which has an "Indian legend" attached to it, of a brave who falls (or jumps?) off a cliff, but because of his woman's love, the wind blows him back safely into her arms. When I get back to Hickory, I go dining with my hosts at the Tap Room downtown. The next morning, I pack up, say goodbye to Paul (Silas is already at work) and head over to the Hickory Furniture Mart. For furniture shopping, I've never seen anything like it. Dozens of quality furniture sellers with acres and acres of floor space in one very large complex. One could spend days there -- not unlike trying to see everything there is to see in the Louvre or the Smithsonian. Shortly after I began looking around, I realized that I didn't have the dimensions or colors or even a sense of the parsonage for Central Unitarian Church, so I couldn't even begin to browse with any seriousness. I window shopped for about an hour, then hit the road heading up to Lynchburg to connect with David and Katy.

I arrived a little after six in the evening. It was great catching up with David and Katy, who were already married when we were the US contingent at the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Institute outside Geneva, Switzerland in the fall of 1992. We were 48 students from 33 countries around the globe, some of whom have recently begun to reconnect on Facebook. David now is the pastor of a church in Lynchburg, and Katy works for a nonprofit there. They have a highly creative and gifted 10-year-old son, who I met for the first time on this trip. We dined at WaterStone, a new pizza restaurant down on the James River. They took me on an night tour of the town. It's very picturesque, and from some vantage points of the hills sloping down to the valley, I began to think of it as a miniature San Francisco, but with a jet d'eau in the river similar to the one in Lake Geneva. The Unitarian Church is also on an incline, with a beautifully incorporated addition behind it.

Friday morning, David made excellent omlettes, as we listened to the voices of NPR's on-air personalities and reporters read the whole Declaration of Independence, which is one of their rituals on the Fourth of July. We went by the gift shop of the point of honor, and David graciously showed me the cemetery and other places of interest before I got on the highway to Washington. It rained a good stretch of the way. I arrived in DC a couple of hours before dark, and have been with family friends since. I marvel at how my nieces and nephew in my extended family have grown since I saw them the last time I was in town, back in March. Today I went with a dear old friend, her son and a playmate of his, to see the movie Wall-E, a family film that worked well on a number of levels. Before the film, that same friend and I went to All Souls Church in Washington, where I know just about all the ministers there from other periods in my life. I'm thinking more and more about taking up the work of ministry myself again in about 35 days.

Tomorrow I leave for Baltimore, then on up to Philly and New Jersey, before a couple of weeks in upstate New York.

*a pseudonym