Finding red dirt…

I am home. Today the rain falls in drops bigger than mist but smaller than a teardrop in a straight line outside my office window. I cannot see the Cascade mountain range from my window today but I know they linger unseen within the fog of this February morning. The dirt my puppy brings in on his paws is dark brown and, depending on the season, yields apple trees and spinach and tall Douglas firs. The rivers and lakes supplied by the mountain snow are clear, and from a distance, appear in shades of blue or green, although today are gray, reflective of their sister sky. This is my home. I know it well, all the smells and seasons and subtleties of a region.

But for reasons I can’t exactly explain, my latest book took me to Alabama and Georgia, to the places of my great-grandmother’s letters and my grandmother’s stories. Before I knew it, I’d completed a manuscript of a time and place requiring hours of research. The last missing piece was a visit to each setting in the novel. The idea of it was impractical, because of my children and a puppy and a husband with his own career. And yet, I couldn’t let it go. The idea of the trip kept me up at night. I knew, in a way that can only be described as instinct, that it was something I had to do. So last week I did it; I was a writer on a mission for missing elements, for clues to my characters secrets and visions, alone in a car with my camera and notepad and GPS.

I went looking for red dirt. And I found it. I found clumps on sidewalks, splashed with early morning rain in the parking lot of the hotel in Campton, Georgia; displayed on the banks along the road that took me to Burnt Mountain in northern Georgia; under the natural grasses of the flat landscape of central Alabama.

A large portion of the book takes place on Burnt Mountain in northern Georgia, twenty or so miles from Jasper, a small, quaint town that looks like a movie set from the 1950’s, complete with a drug store that not only has a pharmacy but a gift shop with angels and crosses and linens displayed in attractive clumps on tidy shelves.  Clean-cut high school kids wrap your purchases in tissue paper, while calling you, “Ma’am”

I drove up Burnt Mountain, searching for Lake Sequoyah, a vacation destination for wealthy Atlanta residents in the 1920’s. The sky is clear. At one point I stop the car to get out and look at the valley below. I drive a few mile further, up Burnt Mountain until I see the lake. But it isn’t the lake of my imagination: crystal clear, surrounded by tall firs and sandy shores. What I found instead was a shallow, skinny body of water the color of the mud puddles I once splashed in as a child in Oregon. This discovery informs everything, including my characters’ perspectives on the “place”, along with the major event that takes place there. Finding that skinny lake the color of mud was worth every amount of time and money I spent.

The “place” is now etched in my memory. Burnt Mountain smells of fallen pine needles. Even in February the birds sing and call out to one another from short, squat pines and drooping, moss-covered oaks. The sky on a sunny day in February is a hazy kind of blue, like the color of faded jeans. And later, when a thunderstorm threatened, the clouds looked like puffs of cotton and the air felt like expectations and pent-up longings.

The people I meet in Georgia and Alabama are different from my northwest sensibility. They speak of Jesus as if he’s their next-door neighbor. They fly American flags in their yards. They speak with exaggerated and elongated vowels. They are unreserved and unabashed in their questions and their curiosity.

And yet, as I discover each time I travel, I realize how true the words of Maya Angelou are. “We are more the same than we are different.”

At dinner on the night of my 43^rd birthday, as I check into the hotel in Canton, Georgia, I ask the Muslim woman behind the counter where I should eat.  Her eyes light up.  “Ah, food,” she says, in a way that makes me know she’s a fellow foodie.  She recommends “Downtown Kitchen” in the historical part of town. When I walk in, I’m greeted by the bartender, JR, with a handshake. I say something about it being my birthday and desire a martini. He makes me a “Bootlegger Martini” – Bootlegger vodka with olives stuffed with blue cheese and bacon. We discuss how the vodka tastes like melons. I hear someone refer to JR’s band. Another artist, I think. We discover we’re the same age. There’s a couple at the counter too. She’s a pretty blond and we joke that we’re both 29. They invite me to sit next to them even though they’re celebrating Valentine’s Day. The older gentleman on the other side of the counter tells me it’s his daughter’s birthday too. She’s 20 today. They all ask me what I’m doing and I tell them about my research trip. The older gentlemen tells me he’s from Alabama originally. The poorest family in town, he says, and now he’s a successful insurance salesman. He pays for my drink before he leaves without me realizing it.

Next thing I know, I discover the couple celebrating Valentine’s Day have been together since they were 15 and have six children. She’s labor and delivery nurse and home schools all their children and took care of her mother when she was sick with cancer.  He does something to do with water levels but mostly he’s too busy bragging about his wife to tell me many details. I joke that she has some angel wings waiting for her up in heaven. They tell me about their work with the homeless and the disenfranchised, that they feel it’s God’s work. Then we start talking about our kids. Before the end of the salad course we’ve shown one another photos of our children, both pulling out our smart phones. Soon, JR sets my meal in front of me. The bowl of collard greens melt in my mouth. The wine and mushroom chicken dish rivals some of the greatest meals I’ve ever eaten.

We may live under a sky with different kinds of clouds and lakes of varied hues but some things are the same no matter where you go. America is still the land of opportunity and freedom. We all worry and fret and love our children. It’s hard to think of anything more beautiful than a man who loves his wife and isn’t afraid to tell a perfect stranger all about it. Martini’s are good but not as great as God. And, a good meal with generous people is a wonderful way to celebrate your birthday.

More on my “southern” adventures in the days to come…