June 22, 2026

Orange Beach, Alabama, is a lot like other beach-vacation towns: high-rise hotels and condos lining the water, fast food, pricey seafood restaurants, teeshirt and souvenir joints. It has the white sand and the surf. Of course it’s the Gulf, not the ocean. We got there as storms gathered, then the rain came.

The idea developed in an odd way. Last summer we took the grandsons to Lambert’s Café, a heavy-Southern food place in Sikeston, Missouri, where the servers throw warm rolls to diners. Yes, they do, it’s on their website at https://throwedrolls.com/ The kids got a kick out of it, most folks do, it’s always packed. Lambert’s has a restaurant in Foley, Ala., near Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. We knew we should go.

Orange Beach is a long drive, about 500 miles from home, but we were in Nashville for the family reunion, which we thought would make it shorter. But Alabama is a long state. On the map the trip down I-65 looks like a straight shot. It’s around 90 miles from Nashville to the state line, then nearly another 400 to Orange Beach.

Like all Southern states, Alabama is mostly rural, farms, pastures, small towns.   The interstate passes quickly through Birmingham, once but no longer a major steel-producing city and Montgomery, the state capital. Before reaching them, and thereafter, I-65 is a path through a blur of forest and occasionally farmland and clusters of barns and warehouses. It’s deep backcountry, probably the way the locals like it.

The GPS mysteriously routed us off I-65 just north of the tiny settlement of Fort Deposit. We discussed, intensely, whether to follow the directions, but it appeared other vehicles were complying, so we did. They quickly disappeared on local roads, we were alone on two-lane highway 185, which winds eerily through woods and clusters of mobile homes and deserted shacks for 12 miles before leading back to ’65 at Greenville.

We left the highway again near Barnett Crossroads, taking state road 113 into Florida and due south on U.S. 29. We watched nervously for local sheriffs as the speed limit bounced from 65 to 55 to 45, then 25. I studied my map. We cruised south, ever south, trying to correlate the GPS directions to the map. We slipped from local highways to city streets through McDavid, Molino, Cantonment, small towns, then smaller towns.

We pulled off the road a couple of times to reorient. Eventually we emerged from the boondocks near Pensacola and found a westbound state road. Water and dunes suddenly showed up, then the beach towers of the Gulf, the high arching bridge back to Alabama, finishing an eight-hour trip.

Like most beach resorts, Orange Beach is a grid network, a main highway running parallel to the beach, intersected by side streets packed with hotels, shopping, eateries, amusements like minigolf and stuff for kids. An actual town does exist, stretching inland from the tourist playground. We learned what should have been obvious: that the place got its name from orange groves that used to occupy private plots. The Gulf winds aren’t kind to the oranges, which ruled out commercial orange farming. But the soil is fertile, and the story is that a single Orange Beach tree once produced 2,000 oranges in a season.

On our first morning, on the murky pond outside the hotel, dozens of giant turtles rose to the surface, waiting for scraps tossed by guests. They swam close to the railing, eyes bulging creepily, then submerged again. Later, an alligator appeared and lay perfectly still, as if eyeballing the turtles—and the guests.

The town’s efforts to lure tourists don’t end at the beach. We read about “Bamahenge,” a replica of England’s Stonehenge surrounded by a dinosaur park. The boys love dinosaurs. From Lambert’s we drove probably 20 miles of rural roads to find it: a deserted clearing in dense woods where fiberglass rocklike structures are arranged in the pattern of Stonehenge. A knock on the fiberglass gives a hollow sound. A path leads through the sweltering woods to a half-dozen fiberglass or plastic dinosaurs. We didn’t stay long.

A hundred or so teenagers arrived at the hotel on buses from Lafayette, Louisiana, for a church camp. They packed the dining room, lugging their backpacks and wearing earphones and teeshirts displaying quotes from Scripture. They overwhelmed the Domino’s Pizza next door for hours and held Bible study in the hotel lobby. Only in the Southland, I thought.

On our last day we made it to the beach. The surf conditions flag was red, snapping in the breeze, warning bathers. The sky was gray, a scattering rain pelted the sand, the Gulf of Mexico/America (take your pick) incoming tide crashed against the sand, slowly eroding the edges of the man-made beach. As the sand washed away, I guessed the city or county or state would soon be trucking in fresh sand to keep the tourists coming.

Other beach visitors were scarce, no doubt because of the stormy weather, which I failed to check before proposing the trip. Our 12-year-old grandson and I walked east for a while along the waterline, feeling the warm Gulf surf wash over our feet. A few brave folks ventured in waist-deep. A fellow cast his long surf-casting rod. The rain picked up, we could see others lugging their towels and umbrellas toward the street.

We followed, hunched low against the wind and rain. That afternoon we were trapped in the van by a monsoon-like cloudburst. I pulled over and parked as the rain obscured the car next to us. Afterward, as we glanced at the sky, angry clouds extended from the horizon. We ended at a Fifties-type diner, the Sunliner, where the servers wore Fifties styles, oldies blared from the sound system. Tourists looked over antique Fords and Chevies parked outside.

We got underway about 7 AM on back roads to I-10 into Mobile. I pushed for a stop at the USS Alabama Memorial on Mobile Bay, nestled among the oil refineries. The Alabama fought in the Pacific, supporting the Marianas, Philippines, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa campaigns. After the war she was decommissioned. In 1964 Alabama was towed to Mobile for her new career as a museum ship. When the Navy reactivated its four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s the ship was cannibalized for parts.

 We skipped the ship tour, anxious to hit the road, but stopped at the Aircraft Pavilion and snapped some pictures. We cruised past the oil tanks, inhaling the rich aroma of America’s energy industry. It was the business end of the beach trip. The rains returned, we pushed on.            

June 15, 2026

We picked up the grandsons and headed for I-40 and slipped through the western North Carolina peaks and the rebuilding of the Pigeon River overpasses. We passed Knoxville and headed into Midstate Tennessee, crossing the pretty Caney Fork River four times, possibly five.

The target was Mount Juliet in Wilson County, just east of Nashville and site of a reunion of the Harper family, which traces roots to an Irishman who as a teenager left the Old Sod in 1857 or 1858. While still a teenager he fought for the Confederates.

Michael Farrell mustered out at war’s end with no rack of medals or recognition. He managed to buy some land and got into farming. He married Bridget, they had ten children. Their kids had kids, and so on. Eventually, Harpers were and are found all over Tennessee. Sandy’s uncle Pete Harper lived to 95. He and his wife Elrose had six. Mike, the third son, organized the reunion.

Saying “yes” to the reunion conveyed not exactly a plan, more of a vague understanding that the trip was no family social drop-in. Inevitably, it was a pilgrimage into the past. Like other Southern places, Tennessee loves its history, revers it, luxuriates in the virtuous and the nightmarish. We stayed in Mount Juliet with Mike, a dedicated scholar, not only of the Harper family story, but also of the vast reach of history that leads us to understanding of our lives.

Mike revealed a sampling of hard truths, the mostly invisible, hardscrabble details of the lives of ordinary people of which history is composed. He showed me three books of a four-volume opus, The Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires which, strangely, he was able to buy on Amazon. It’s available for $50. The books, published in 1985, are a catalogue of answers to questionnaires sent to some 1,600 Tennesseans, obtained between 1915 and 1929 by two Tennessee State Library archivists.

Two forms of the questionnaire were distributed to these elderly gents, all in their seventies or eighties. The questions sought personal information, name, birthdate, birthplace, family background. They probe the mens’ (they’re all men) lives, like date and place of enlistment, details of service. The questions explore awareness of the war’s cause, the horror of slavery, whether the men owned slaves (very few) or knew slaveowners—again, very few.

Most, like Michael Farrell, were farmers, their fathers were farmers, their mothers and wives cooked, sewed, cleaned, cared for children, often five or six or more. They were low-ranking enlisted men who fought in many battles, suffered serious wounds. After the war most returned to farming, often to poverty.

The answers were unedited, rough and raw, showing a few years of school, sometimes a few months. One remarkable man attended the U.S. Naval Academy; when the war started he abandoned the Navy and enlisted with the rebels. Another said he himself had been a slave, he didn’t know his age or where he was born, but he knew where he had fought. Yes, the Confederates had black soldiers.

The books, the names in alphabetical order, draw excruciating detail about private lives in those tragic years, halting, pained commentaries written decades after the fighting ended.

The next day Mike finalized his reunion planning. He packed his detailed family-tree display boards, old photo albums and documents. He bought food, packed the gas grill and table coverings, made last-minute calls.

Sandy and I drove with the boys into the city and stopped at the veterans cemetery near Madison. We walked a bit and found the gravesites for Sandy’s mother and father, a Navy veteran, and older brother, who served three Vietnam tours and died young, his death attributed to Agent Orange exposure.

We parked near the State Capitol and climbed the dozens of steps to the entrance and got through security. The massive, somber, church-shaped building was quiet. The governor was absent. The rock-solid Republican legislature recessed after passing a “redistricting” measure that reshapes the state’s lone Black-majority 9th district in Memphis as a safe Republican district, pushing the state’s longtime Democratic congressman to retire.

The Capitol’s statuary recognizes the state’s warlike past. Outside, Andrew Jackson on his steed looms above the north view of the city. Nearby, World War I sharpshooter Audie Murphy aims his rifle at imaginary Germans. In the second-floor corridor, busts of Jackson, segregationist President Andrew Johnson, and Alamo hero Davey Crockett stare down at visitors.

The Capitol isn’t all about combat. The second floor displays a bust of Sampson W. Keeble, the first Black member of the General Assembly. Also shown: an engraving recognizing passage of the 19th Constitutional amendment, which establishes women’s suffrage. Another depicts Black men voting after passage of the 14th amendment, which guarantees citizenship to all persons born in or naturalized in the U.S, and the 15th, which guarantees the right to vote.

As in other places, history starts fights. In 1987 the Sons of the Confederacy demanded removal of a portrait of Governor William Brownlow, a one-time defender of slavery who changed his thinking and supported Reconstruction while in office (1865-1869). In 2021, over protests, a bust of Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest was moved to the Tennessee State Museum.

We climbed back down the outside stairs past the giant Jackson and Murphy statues. Their bold stories didn’t register with the 1,600 veterans who wrote their answers decades after their service.

Like other ordinary people across America who served in all of America’s wars, they fought and suffered. Books weren’t written about them. Their lives created histories, of the agony of war, in suffering, but also humility and dignity, stories that teach and inspire. 

June 8, 2026

The Swamp Rabbit Trail faded into forest. A half-mile from where I stood, silhouettes of a few walkers and cyclists wobbled forward through a cavern of green. This was two or three miles south of Travelers Rest, the semi-cute, touristy village some 15 miles north of Greenville. 

I had started at the trail’s northern terminus, which meets the end of a lonely country road three miles north of the town. Thick forest leans over the asphalt. A patch of light shows a quarter-mile distant. In 15 minutes a highway appears, the trail follows in parallel. A single walker appeared a couple of hundred yards ahead, then a runner moved by, a tall thin guy. I passed Carolina Embroidery, across the highway I spied a long flat warehouse, signed as “GRACE CHURCH.”

Twenty minutes more took me into the center of Travelers Rest. Traffic picked up on the highway, which is Main Street, as cyclists flew by on the trail in both directions, along with runners and parents pushing strollers. A digital gauge fitted with a camera standing next to the trail offered a count of passersby.

The city of Greenville built the trail along an abandoned rail line about 20 years ago, pushed by local hikers and nature lovers. The project went through some hiccups, financial problems, land-use issues, local opposition. But in the end it’s an asphalt path. Construction amounted to grading and paving. Two cars can’t fit side-by-side.

I read that people started walking the trail in 2008, although it didn’t officially open until 2010.  “Swamp Rabbit” was a nickname for the no-longer existing Greenville & Northern railroad, which ran from Travelers Rest to Greenville.

The trail surface is mostly level, so popular with walkers, runners, folks with strollers, cyclists. They’re out there for the fresh air, fitness, and scenery, in any order, any season, dawn to after dusk. It’s a touch of nature without the hassle, just concrete and asphalt, no rocks, roots, poison ivy, snakes, or other unpleasant elements of the outdoors. In parts there are mosquitos.

In these weeks following the melanoma work, my days grew long. You can only read so many books and magazines, walk around the block only so many times. I pushed the distances out farther, eight, ten miles (On the Road May 25). The state park was off limits. I added to my share of light household chores, folding clothes, cooking meals, or at least heating them up.

Amidst all those time-killing things, I sat in the house. Outside the scruffy grass of the unmowed lawn had grown thicker since a heavy rain. Our little plot of shrubs accumulated weeds. I thought then of the trail, which bisects the county, northwest and southeast, into wilder, gentler places.

I could start at the center and head outbound and return. Or aim at a longer distance, from the northern terminus, hiking southbound as far as possible in five or six hours, through the mill district and into the suburban flow of strollers, cyclists, and walkers, which intensifies closer to downtown. I checked with a few others, no takers. This would be a solo project.

Sandy went along with the idea, although she had other things going on that day. Early Thursday we navigated through a maze of winding country byways to find Tate Road, a short, deserted strip surrounded by silent forest. The trail’s end intersects with the road. No signs or markings. We had a quick kiss, I trudged forward.

I followed the asphalt—all you have to do, the trail is idiot-proof. Traffic picks up, the highway becomes Main Street. The trail continues parallel to Main past a driving range, a restored Victorian home, now a lodge, a brewery, some tourist businesses. Then into the woods.

The wooded stretches are serene columns of green and deep shade. The pedestrian and bike traffic thins and disappears, the trail extends into haze. Cyclists yell “Left,” the walker jumps. I learned to stick to the right-hand fringe. Here and there a house shows up. I try for long strides, the woods inches forward, sunlight breaking through the shade every few hundred yards.

The trail crosses a half-dozen streets north of the Furman University campus. Vehicles slow for the trail traffic. Lean young guys without shirts race by, training for cross country. The pretty campus lake and bell tower and the soccer stadium come into view. Then back in the woods for a while. Rail tracks appear to the east. A half-dozen freight cars sit next to a big sign, “Berea,” an unincorporated place. Warehouses and factory yards line the trail behind chain-link fences.

Here the Reedy River, which eventually flows through downtown Greenville, appears as a narrow muddy stream on the east side of the trail. A factory wall shows a colorful painting with the magical legend, “We rise by lifting others.”  

At about ten miles I pass the Swamp Rabbit Café and Grocery, a chic health-food hangout, coffeeshop, and playground. Cyclists pull over for coffee and beers, parents watch kids on swings. I sprawl at a picnic table and pause for five minutes to gulp water and electrolytes. The Reedy widens a bit.

Traffic picks up as the trail moves through the old mill district. Sturdy multilevel brick structures that once housed busy textile mills rise on either side, some as abandoned hulks, others already turned into condos or offices. Further along, men and machines are at work, bulldozers and excavators pushing huge heaps of Carolina clay. Warning signs show up, the trail detours into Unity Park.

The park is pretty, a monument to Greenville’s late-arriving spirit of racial tolerance and regret for decades (about a century) of Jim Crow politics. Nicely landscaped ball fields and play areas border the trail. The Reedy flows faster, crashing over rocks through downtown. The trail becomes a city promenade, lined by expensive hotels and restaurants. It follows the river into shaded Falls Park. Kids, barefoot, tiptoe across the rocks.

My pace is slower, I feel the warm sun on my shoulders. I make the turn after Cancer Survivor Park, a lovely, poignant spot, then press on past the Veterans Memorial, breathing deeply. Another turn, at 14 miles, leads into fashionable Cleveland Park.

Moms are watching kids at the big playground at the edge of the Park. I push on along the trail extension under the bright sun. The forest thickens again, a quiet jungle of kudzu. My strides are shorter, at 15 miles, five hours. I turn and hoof it a half-mile to the zoo, Sandy is waiting. I look back. The trail still beckons, casting its spell. Another time.  

June 1, 2026

On Memorial Day morning this town got a break from the storms that drenched us on Sunday. Dark clouds still billowed overhead, as if reflecting a mixed mood of reverence and sadness, indifference and hope.

The ceremony at the Greenville County government building was moved indoors because of the threatening skies, a standing-room-only crowd packed into a conference room. At 10:00 AM a lineup of local leaders sat facing the throng. The program identified them, city and county officials and people from various civic groups.

Memorial Day, by revered tradition, isn’t a political occasion. We gather in public places to honor the fallen. Speakers don’t push candidates. We want to leave uplifted, reminded of the eternal debt we owe those who didn’t return. That is how it has always been.

Things are different this year. The country has been infected with partisan politics. One baseline: Trump pardoning people who trashed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He is still flogging the stolen election lie.

Just that week I finished Laura K. Field’s Furious Minds (Princeton University Press). She dissects the intellectual origins of Trumpism, or the “MAGA New Right.” Field, a scholar at George Washington University and American University, lived in the New Right world and plumbed its depths, starting with the thinking of German political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) and of his scholar-descendants, and the lawyers, political charlatans, fanatics, and misogynists who signed on with the Trump cult. 

Field writes: “Conservative intellectualism … had all but vanished from the discourse that dominated the Republican Party. Champions of the U.S. Constitution … were now sympathetic to a man who obviously cared very little for constitutional niceties.”

“Eventually,” she points out, “Trump’s and the New Right’s lie about a stolen election became orthodoxy on the right and … took the shape of a ‘New Lost Cause’ myth, the recitation of which became a (bizarre) symbol of patriotism.”

Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee for and now-confirmed chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his Senate hearing, declined to acknowledge that Trump had lost the 2020 election, saying only that “this body certified the election.”

I thought: it’s Memorial Day, give it a rest. But then it occurred to me that for millions of Americans, MAGA, “make America great again” conveys a powerful messianic appeal, a mystical vision of an America that has never existed. That vision has enticed evangelical Christians, respectable businesspeople, and veterans to vote for a draft dodger convicted of sexual assault who bankrupted six companies.   

For our many years in Virginia we attended Memorial Day observances at Quantico National Cemetery. The event always was well-planned, polished, reverent. Hundreds attended. Speakers were senior Veterans or Defense Department officials and the commander of the nearby Marine Corps base, who spoke eloquently about the virtues of service. A Marine band detachment played stirring tunes. A sharp squad of Marines executed the 21-gun salute, a skilled bugler played a reverent Taps.

Our first Memorial Day in this city in 2021 went differently. The ceremony took place in a park, a small crowd gathered. One fellow sang the national anthem. He seemed rusty with the lyrics. Someone gave a short talk, shuffling handwritten notes. The event planning and execution clanged oddly. I guessed, well, this is a small town.

I showed up for Memorial Day 2026, the theme being dedication of a new veterans’ memorial outside the county building. I snared a seat near the front. The chairman of Greenville County Veterans Affairs welcomed us. An American Legion honor guard presented the colors.

We recited the pledge, a young girl led us in the national anthem. We then did the “pledge to the flag of South Carolina,” which I didn’t know and had never heard of.

The county council chairman offered brief remarks. He introduced the guest speaker, a local historian. He gave an interesting talk, reminding us that a lot of Revolutionary War fighting took place in the state. Francis Marion, the famous “Swamp Fox” was only one of the local heroes.

The chair introduced the head of a local chapter of the SC Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). She spoke at length about her work identifying veterans, living and deceased, for inclusion in the new memorial, clearly a labor of love for her. The council chair then called up the ladies from the DAR and other patriotic groups. One by one, in their flowing colonial-vintage dresses, they marched up and curtsied. We applauded politely.

A white-haired fellow stood, surprise, U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham—not on the program. The chair introduced him. Graham moved with practiced skill to the front of the room and picked up the microphone.

The crowd, veterans and family members, and others came to honor fallen heroes. Reverence and remembrance were on our minds. As an Air Force veteran, a retired colonel who served as a judge advocate, Graham certainly would fit the bill as a guest speaker who could raise our thoughts to those who did not return from fields of conflict.

Graham said not a word about Memorial Day, its noble theme and sentiments. He moved back and forth across the room. He talked about the war with Iran, the evil mullahs “who hate us,” the Iran attacks on shipping, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

We’ve read Trump is trying to put his war and its slaughter of civilians and worldwide economic chaos behind him. Graham took a different tack. “We have to be ready,” he said ominously. His voice trailing away, leaving a dark thought hanging: the troops over there may have to keep fighting and possibly dying.

Graham is running for reelection. The ceremony crowd surely were his people. A few hands clapped tentatively, but most stayed silent. His grim talk landed with a thud.

I thought of Field’s book, which calls the role of Ivy League professors, podcasters, political operators, and fundamentalist Christians who came around to Trump when they saw him as a kind of tool. Graham signed on after the 2016 election, after voting for independent candidate and anti-Trumper Evan McMullin.   

Someone up front announced, “We’re adjourned.” The officials stood and moved into the crowd, everyone hoped to see the memorial before the heavens opened again. Outside, folks studied the inscriptions on the marble and snapped photos. Some touched the engraved names. Together, in silence, they remembered.

May 25, 2026

A weed-filled backyard, partly hidden by an unpainted wood-slat fence, occupies a corner lot along a busy street in Greenville, South Carolina. A mile away, a vacant lot is surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron wall. A short mile from our neighborhood are homes built with lovely second-floor decks. Not far away, a dark thicket of bamboo conceals an old farmhouse.

Over five years in this place, driving these streets, I never noticed any of this. But last week’s melanoma operation meant no exercising that would risk tearing the stitches. No stretching or raising arms above shoulders. No running or jogging. So the choice is walk, or do nothing.

Our small neighborhood in Greer, a Greenville suburb, is a loop. Two dead-end streets merge at the subdivision entrance and run in parallel for a half-mile. Three trips around the loop come to about a mile. A few folks jog the course. An elite runner pushes his daughter in her stroller as he flies by. You can rack up miles by going around and around. But walking the loop gets old.

Like lots of suburbs, Greer is a mix of residential streets and vestiges of farmland waiting to be bulldozed, set off by low-rise office buildings and strip malls. There’s a small downtown with a few boutiques, coffee shops, and restaurants. Stretches of townhomes border patches of woodland also waiting to be turned into subdivisions.

Carrying a water bottle, I left our street and slogged along the fringe of a busy thoroughfare. Suber Road is a straight shot to a primary intersection, the red and green of the signal are visible a mile distant. For the first hundred or so yards there’s no sidewalk or shoulder, I stuck to the south side, walking along the edge of peoples’ front yards. Traffic roared by.

It’s an old saw, but walking may create a mystical or cosmic experience. The walker watches and even counts his or her steps, feeling the rhythm of pace. The staccato foot-pounding, the gradual, evolutionary closing on a target, the short, panting breaths draw the mind out of the moment. You are walking for the exercise, but also to reaffirm life, existence. 

I passed a ballfield and pickleball courts, always crowded, the thwock-thwock of the balls echoes for blocks. Townhouses line the north side, opposite massive Riverside Baptist. Suber meets Hammett Bridge Road at the signal, across from huge Riverside High. Turning south means an easy downslope past Hammett Creek, a sluggish brown stream that winds into forest.

The upslope is a long curvy four-lane road. Woods obscures the summit. Here is the bamboo, which partially hides a vine-covered building, probably owned by the farmer of Hammett Bridge Farm, which lies around the bend. The woods end at a large pasture. Cows sometimes graze there, less often now. You might guess that the owner is looking to sell. Here I was at two miles.

The pasture is bordered by a dense treeline. I was panting now, at an intersection with Batesville. I made the turn, facing bright sunlight. Across a broad lawn was Fellowship Presbyterian, next to a giant house, the pastor’s home, I guessed.

I plodded on past Boiling Springs fire station and Buena Vista Elementary, which borders another pasture. Again, we have seen cows grazing, but recently a sign appeared announcing a public hearing, probably to discuss the owner’s plan to sell to a developer. No cows today.

Batesville takes the walker past upscale subdivisions named River Oaks, Canebrake, Sugar Creek, Abingdon Hall, Barrington Park. A couple of them are gated, you need to live there to get in, or know someone who does. The hedgerows are thick, hiding the pools. On the right is Stoney Creek Recreation Center, with four tennis courts, now dual-use for pickleball. I hit three miles.

This is pleasant country. The sidewalk borders tall, manicured crepe myrtles. Front yards show off pretty landscaping, flowerbeds, rosebushes, trimmed shrubbery, cared for by people gifted with the gentler touch of suburban life.

Then too, this is the South, for some folks pride in property is akin to pride in self. Yet in this temperate, humid climate, dandelions, chickweed, crabgrass, and other noxious species are primed to attack and overwhelm lawns. This spring a six-month drought has brought epidemic weed growth. On some streets, yard after yard show as scrub-growth jungles.

The suburban universe fell behind me, I was in retail territory. To my left a Zaxby’s Chicken Fingers & Buffalo Wings faces a CVS. Traffic whizzed by. Across the street is a wide strip mall anchored by a Publix, alongside a Jersey Mike’s. Batesville here intersects with the Parkway, left with that name, I guessed, because no one thought of anything else. A Lovely Nails & Spa perches at the corner, across is a multipump Spinx gas station.

A few hundred yards down the Parkway I hit four miles. I schlepped faster on the downhill straightaway, past a skin care and plastic surgery practice. The slope of the road turned steeper. I could see the slanted roof of the Michelin USA headquarters. 

I felt distracted by the surroundings. The Parkway is a nice descent for a quarter-mile past Jet’s Pizza, Maven Hair, a drycleaner, and a Thai restaurant. A side street takes you into the very chic Thornblade neighborhood, known for its private club and golf course.

I breathed harder, slowing a bit, passing a Courtyard Marriott, where we had stayed on our first nights in town. It was Halloween weekend, 2020.  Covid was scary. Within weeks I was in the operating room at the downtown hospital.

The Parkway intersects with Pelham Road. Across was the ramp to I-85. Traffic lined up. I passed a Dunkin Donuts and turned onto Pelham.  Within a block I made five miles. It was about 11:00 AM. The sun was high and hot.

My legs were tired, my shoulders ached. The Parkway in reverse faded uphill. I paused and looked around, five miles out under a noon sun. I could have strolled on a treadmill at the air-conditioned YMCA gym.

This chain of busy streets is a kludge of neon signs glowing, drivers looking for parking. Traffic threatens. The urban hiker watches and waits at intersections, on guard. No pondering the future or the state of mankind. The walking surface is hard and hot. Well, it was a choice.

We made many choices over all these decades, work, family, work, more work, packing and moving, packing and moving, until landing in this place. The kids scattered, people passed on. We got through the medical things. They keep coming. I eased my pace.

I stopped and looked ahead at the sidewalk snaking down the hill then up again, into the warm haze. I inhaled a mix of spring air and exhaust.  My five-mile asphalt and concrete tour will have to become ten—another choice. I swigged some water and moved on.