Kenny and I spent the first three weeks of 2017 traveling down the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville to Natchez. If you missed week 1 and 2, you can catch up here and here. We left off last week a little off the Trace at Goshen Springs Campground where we had to get our van fixed. Now, we're at the final campground on the Trace: Rocky Springs.
Week 3: Camping at Rocky Springs
January 17, 2017
This morning we hiked to the town site of Rocky Springs, about a mile up the road above our campground. Established in 1790, at its heyday 2,600 people lived in the town. Today there’s still a functional church and an historic cemetery, as well as some cisterns from former buildings. The town met its end between some combination of yellow fever and the boll weevil.
We went in the cemetery and out of respect…for something… we left Annie tied up at the gate. A small, isolated gravestone sunk into the ground under a giant tree with more swooping arms than I could count. An entire family of stones stood in a line, with the patriarch in the middle and two of three wives and their offspring on either side. As we walked further in, Annie whined, and whined. Don’t leave me? Or Don’t go in there? Annie’s howling was getting sad (and spooky), so I went back for her. Kenny followed.
We walked around to the front of the church. Kenny tried the knob on the right door. Locked. Then the left door. Also locked. So, we set out on the half-mile Rocky Springs town trail with the church and cemetery behind us. We pointed out cisterns and traces of foundations, and were back at the beginning within ten minutes. I looked up at the church on the hill. “Kenny, is that door open?” He looked up. “Is that a piano playing?” A teenage girl walked out the door and Kenny jumped, nearly falling to the ground. Some kids had driven up when we were walking. Kenny hadn’t pushed the door hard enough…I guess.
(Oh, and the car repair only cost $300!)
January 18, 2017
We’ve been at Rocky Springs Campground - the final campground on the Trace - for three nights. Annie just got a bath in the creek after rolling in animal poop at some ford next to a mound next to a cemetery.
We came in close to 5:00 pm on Sunday night, but didn’t realize it was MLK weekend. The campground was nearly full (a few turned out to be picnicking and left at sundown), but we found a site at the bottom of the hill. Unfortunately, our across the road neighbors, in their palatial two-room tent, came prepared with a flood lamp, a satellite dish, and a generator that ran their lights and TV all night. In the morning, we moved to a quiet spot at the top of the hill with ample space to play frisbee with Annie.
We’ve mostly been bumming around the Trace, but yesterday we made the trip to Vicksburg. The architecture is fascinating. It was enough of a trip in and of itself to drive through Vicksburg, pointing out towering antebellum mansions and sagging brick buildings from the 1800s. A fading hotel sign painted on the side of a three-story building overlooking the Mississippi River, where a rich, bustling town once watched steamboats and military ships pass by.
We took a walk down the row of 20 or more murals painted on the floodgates of the Mississippi. The paintings tell the history of Vicksburg, all the way from early Mississippians to today’s contemporary population. It’s a telling of the town’s history that glosses over the unsavory bits, like taking land from Native Americans or being a slavery hub, and highlights fun things like being home to blues icon Willie Dixon and Teddy Roosevelt’s failed bear hunt.
But, you can remember history however you like, I suppose. You can also still call Vicksburg a Mississippi River town, although that’s not entirely accurate. In 1876, the Mississippi changed course and decided to up and leave Vicksburg, heading a few miles west. In the early 1900s, the Army Corp filled the old dried channel of the Mississippi River with diverted water from the Yazoo River to make Vicksburg a waterfront town once again. So, call things whatever you want, but the truth is out there!
After spending the morning in town, we went to the Vicksburg National Military Park, which I knew next to nothing about. Turns out, we should have come earlier and could have spent days there.
To oversimplify, you should historically care about Vicksburg because it’s where the Union won the Siege of Vicksburg, regaining control over the lower Mississippi and helping end the Civil War. The Vicksburg National Military Park commemorates multiple things. One: along its 16-mile driving tour of the Vicksburg battlefield, every blue sign represents the front lines of the Union Army and the red signs the Confederate Army, so visitors can walk (read: drive) in the footsteps of Civil War soldiers and see the battle unfold.
Two: there are over 1,400 monuments, tablets, and markers dedicated by every state that participated in the Civil War to their soldiers. And they come in a variety of sizes, from the bust of a general to Minnesota’s obelisk that touches the sky.
The monuments from the North are grandiose and were some of the first erected in the park. The ones from the South took longer to commission and were more humble in size. The North had more money to commemorate their fallen. I wonder what that felt like being a visitor in 1917. The Civil War only 50 or so years behind us when the park was completed.
And what about now, in 2017? Have we progressed? How fragile is our truce? We aren’t in the future. I mean, segregation, racism, sexism, poverty, equal rights are not in the past. The fight has hardly begun. I’ve driven past too many Confederate flags waving on houses, on T-shirts, on cars in the South. I’ve driven past the “World’s Biggest Confederate Store”. I’ve gone to stores in black neighborhoods and been the minority.
On Friday, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States. It’s a scary time because it will be a different time. It’s been especially eye opening as a white middle-class Coloradan having travelled around the country and seeing what poor means in North Dakota, Tennessee, Mississippi. I get that I can’t always win in a democracy, but it doesn’t feel like I’m the only one who lost.
January 19, 2017
Aw, man. Did it rain all night and day.
We woke up early in the morning to thunderclaps and pitter-patter. The humidity is 115% and we tried to sleep with the windows closed to keep the rain out. Annie’s heavy breathing alone made that impossible. We cracked her side window and woke up to a puddle on her cushion and a damp curtain.
I got out of bed a little before 7:00 am, but the sun wasn’t out.
After the first pot of coffee, we were still waiting for light and decided to brave the rain so Annie and Kenny could go to the bathroom (earlier, I asked and gave myself permission to use the trailer toilet). We had to pull Annie into the rain. She tried hiding under a canopy of trees, but her little feet started to sink into the over saturated, spongy earth.
We got some silly stuff done inside today. I finally made a chart so we can easily read the voltmeter and see how much battery charge we have left. I sewed a couple patches on my vest. Kenny sewed a hole in his back pocket. I put on my rain jacket and washed the dishes, setting them on the drying rack in the pouring rain. We decided we’d try to wait until 3:00 pm before we could drink a beer. Kenny made it until 2:00 pm, and I’ll probably be close behind at 2:30.
About an hour ago the constant patter turned to an almost inaudible pitter. Annie, luxuriating in deep, full body stretches between deep sleeps with running feet and snarling dream lips, needed to go for a walk. She just didn’t know it. “Annie, wanna go for a walk?” She slowly opened her right eye, considered it, and shut it again. “Annie, do you wanna for for a walk?” This time she slowly maneuvered to a seated position and looked out the window. She agreed. This was our chance.
We walked over to the picnic area. Yesterday, the deep crevasses that sliced through the woods were dry. We even commented when we went by “Sand Creek” that it was an appropriate name. Today, a quick stream ran through, so fast that you could hear the moving water before you saw it. The resurrection ferns stretched out on the tops of tree limbs after their long nap. Neon green moss lit up the base of oak trees like spilled paint. The magnolia leaves, so dark they were almost shadows.
Kenny threw rocks down the hill and Annie threw herself after them. Up and down, over and down. She was happy to get her legs running, outside of her nap marathon.
On our windup radio we learned earlier this morning that a tornado touched down near us. Also, that a flash flood warning was in effect near Jackson. Also, that it rains in Mississippi during the winter - it’s their snow, said one radio personality. We also learned what county we’re in - Claiborne - which thankfully doesn’t have any severe weather warnings. Just endless rain.
It’s odd being here with no cellphone reception and no internet, but actually really nice. I wish we had a battery powered radio, just for the weather report. And, hell, something to listen to other than these beautiful raindrops and singing birds.