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Living and Writing in the Natural World

Kayaking through history: the Potomac River and Manchac Swamp

The Manchac Swamp west of New Orleans

Though my train trip from California to the east coast and back was full of pleasures (old high school and college friends; the vast American landscape; new acquaintances on the train; a roomful of Monets at Chicago’s Art Institute; a Nats-Giants game in WDC; a plethora of Georgia O’Keeffes at the National Gallery, plus several of Alfred Stieglitz’s (in)famous photos of her), I must admit that among the highlights were my two kayak trips, the first on the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay, the second into the Manchac Swamp west of New Orleans.

I had followed the Potomac River out my train window for several hours and well over a hundred miles upon awakening on the overnighter from Chicago and drawing closer to the nation’s capital. It is a placid river in its youth, flowing amongst densely wooded banks in West Virginia. At Harper’s Ferry the equally scenic Shenandoah joins it, flowing up from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley on the west side of the Blue Ridge mountains. On a river packed with history, its Harper’s Ferry phase stands out.

Thomas Jefferson sat on a rock outside of town overlooking the Potomac here in October of 1783 on his way to Philadelphia with daughter Patsy. You can sit on “Jefferson’s Rock” these days and it’s still a fine view, tho hardly “perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature” as Jefferson described it.

Several years later George Washington passed through,  Read More 

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Heading Home: the South and Southwest by Rail

Petrochemical corridor, Louisiana ("Cancer Alley")

After a marvelous college-roommate reunion, I boarded Amtrak's Crescent route in Greenville, South Carolina (home of the Swamp Rabbit Trail, which I bicycled along the Reedy River) and headed for New Orleans in a long day of riding the rails. The Crescent here traverses the cradle of two distinctly American phenomena: folk music of gospel, jazz, blues, country; and the Civil Rights Movement, both amply represented in the small and large towns I passed through this day.

Which set me to wondering about the connection between art and tragedy. In town after town, the legacy of slavery and poverty seemed intertwined with epochal musicians. Coincidence? Or the bitter yet beautiful fruits of struggle?

In several stops we were at the curiously nondescript depot of Atlanta, Georgia, hometown of Martin Luther King, Jr., who would challenge the entire nation in his speeches and marches. The nearby village of Villa Rica was the birthplace of Thomas Dorsey, the father of gospel music, whose Take my Hand, Precious Lord was sung at the funerals of both MLK and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Soon we entered Alabama, the first stop of Anniston being the site where a bus packed with black and white Freedom Riders was firebombed in the summer of 1961. Then came Birmingham,  Read More 

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