I spent Monday night in one of those superb Florida state parks: St. George Island in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the state’s northwestern coast. Although new homes are sprouting like mushrooms after a rain and a new bridge to the mainland is under construction, the island is still relatively undeveloped; a good portion of it will stay that way, thanks to the park.

That evening I wandered on the beach until I realized that it was dark and I was completely alone and far from Uli, so I grudgingly traded the solitude and soothing surf for the safety and community of the campground. I was delighted to notice that my neighbors on the left came home later than I did and seemed to be fellow night owls. That alone was a rarity, since campers generally fall into the early-to-bed-early-to-rise category.

My campsite had two utility poles to accommodate a clothesline, but the length of plastic-coated line I had brought along couldn’t bridge the gap. Though just about everybody else had either pulled out permanently or decamped to the beach for the day, the night-owl neighbors sat at their picnic table watching with amusement as I realized that the clothesline was not meant to be. They offered me the use of theirs, and as I gratefully hung my damp towels we started gabbing. view photo

 :: Some Folks Know How to Live ::

Dan and Mabel Stahly are a seventy-something pair with a real zest for life. Dan used to fly his own plane, but that got to be a bit much; they have been pulling a trailer for about 12 years. The couple travels all over the country (last year they made their second trip to Alaska), but on this trip they were visiting a daughter and grandchildren who had rented a house nearby for a beach vacation. “When we graduated in 1944,” said Mabel, “I never would have dreamed that we’d travel like this.” He gave her a ring in 1945 and the following year they were married. They unsettled their farming families by moving a hundred miles south to Tipton, Indiana. Farming wasn’t for them: “We tried it for awhile but decided there were easier ways of going broke,” Dan laughed. Four kids put a hold on his dream of flying, but once the kids were gone—I believe he said he was 49—he finally got off the ground and the couple started exploring.

We talked of life after 9/11; like most people with whom I’ve raised the subject, they take a pragmatic approach. Dan told of encouraging a reluctant friend to fly, reminding the man that it’s most likely much safer to fly now than it was before 9/11. Mabel said, “We don’t stay home because of fears, but you’re mindful.” Actually, the two don’t seem to be afraid of much of anything, except the possibility of their ROTC grandson having to go to war. In an e-mail exchange, Mabel expressed concern and apparently got an earnest lecture on protocol and patriotism. (“Haven’t you been parents and grandparents long enough to know better?,” I teased.) They hope that he will realize he’ll be of more value to his country when he has the requisite degree and commission a little further down the line—he pointed out that putting school on hold and enlisting was always an option. view photo

 :: Coasts Equal Crowds ::

With wonderful neighbors and gorgeous beaches, I was sorely tempted to stay a little longer. But I found out that my campsite had been reserved for that night, so I took it as a sign to move on. (Mabel gave me the printout of her online reservation so I’d have the URL and phone number—by registering early and online, they paid over 30 percent less than I did per night.)

At The Hut on route 98 west, I had a huge, Gulf-seafood-combo lunch that cost me less than $10 with tax and tip. I couldn’t bear to leave the water so I endured the roadwork (another blue highway bites the dust) and the slow-moving beachfront traffic and pedestrians. But by the time I got to Navarre, a tony seaside strip of high-rise condos just east of Pensacola, where teens drive fast, expensive cars, I was ready to head north. view photo

 :: God and Country ::

The landscape quickly changed from flat, sandy coast to rolling, red-dirt pine forests. Just as quickly, hedonistic pleasures surrendered to God and country. Churches were everywhere you looked and patriotic signs were nearly as plentiful.

I passed through Monroeville, Alabama, the county seat where Harper Lee lived and wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. A white lady told me that the white kids attending private schools take a field trip every year to the old courthouse, where they sit in the hot, un-air-conditioned courtroom for a reenactment of the book’s infamous trial. She didn’t know whether the black kids attending the public schools did the same. In her school district, at least, the private schools are 100 percent white and the public schools are 100 percent black, and the two systems remain completely separate. I liked her, so I didn’t even bother to ask if they were equal. view photo

 :: There’s a Frog In My Sink ::

Alabama’s state parks are as lovely in their own way as Florida’s, and I spent two nights in the Roland Cooper State Park about 30 miles south of Selma. The first night I relaxed and caught up on some work (there was electric and water at each campsite), then visited my own private dock maybe 20 yards away down through the woods. The fish were biting and I longed for a pole, but was too cheap to buy one at the camp store knowing I’d have to leave it behind.

Late Friday night I made my last trip to the bathroom and found a frog in one of the two old sinks. No big deal, just a tiny, translucent, lime-green frog staring down a big daddy longlegs on the other side of the bowl. Entranced, I watched and wished I had my camera. I could see the frog’s throat pulsating and his crouch tightening, but neither critter moved and I had to eventually. When I returned I saw the spider but thought that the frog had gone; then I noticed his head and one eye, cocked at the spider, sticking out of the overflow slot at the front of the bowl opposite spout and spider. I wanted to see who would win this war of nerves, but thought it only right to leave them to get on with it without having to worry about some giant interloper.

Nothing is ever completely ordinary when you are camping, and that’s one good reason why I camp. It would be shocking, to say the least, to find a frog in your sink at the Waldorf Astoria, but somehow it seemed perfectly natural—a gift, no less—when it happened in a campground. The frog, of course, would be the same beautiful creature in either setting, but it was the setting that determined my reaction to him. The “proper” context comforts us, but sometimes it also blinds us to things we don’t even know we’re missing. view photo

 :: The Cannons Point North::

Which brings me, perhaps, to Selma. When first I drove through it, I liked it—though faded and clearly economically depressed, it had a comfortable, small-town feel. And the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of the fateful 1965 encounters between state police and civil-rights marchers, was just a bridge.

But beside the southern end of the bridge—the Montgomery-bound side the troopers guarded so zealously—a memorial park was dedicated in 2001 to the “martyrs” who died in those encounters and the leaders who organized the march. The year before, a stone plinth topped with a bust was erected in the town’s beautiful Live Oak Cemetery in honor of Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s “unwavering defense of Selma, the great state of Alabama, and the Confederacy. . . . Deo vindice.” On the back, below the Confederate seal, it says that the monument was erected and dedicated by chapters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Alabama Society Order of the Confederate Rose, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. The monument was placed near the much older, much larger monument to C.S.A. President Jefferson Davis and the sons of Dallas County who died in the War Between the States (the Confederate soldiers lie due south of Jeff; on his other side, cannons point northward).
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 :: Brown Chapel Alive and Well ::

I visited Brown Chapel, where the 1965 marches originated and Heat Moon stopped by a little over a decade later. The neighborhood is still a project, as he described it, but at least one more neat, peaceful, and neighborly than many others I have seen. When I first arrived around 5 PM, women were visiting on stoops across the street and children played in the distance, but the 1908 church itself was still and imposing. A monument to the dead marchers, erected not too long after Heat Moon visited, stands out front. (I’m convinced that Selma would be a much happier place if it had as many jobs as it has monuments.)

I was just about to leave when an arriving woman told me that that evening’s session of vacation bible school would start shortly, so if I wanted to see the inside of the church I could wait. The sanctuary was lovely, all soaring pale-yellow walls bounded by dark, elegant woodwork and stained-glass windows. But I was most pleased to know that the real church—the people who give the building life and meaning—was alive and well. The Rev. James Jackson and I briefly talked about everything from the church’s services (mass meetings pretty much did away with Sunday evening services in the South, he said) to 9/11 (which reminded him to remind his congregation more often of the need to be ready to meet their maker).

Brown Chapel sits on—what else?—Martin Luther King, Jr. Street. Its northern end dead-ends at Jeff Davis Avenue; the southern end turns into Mulberry for a block before stopping at the edge of the Alabama River, which the Pettus Bridge spans a few blocks further west. view photo

 :: Going Where I Don’t “Belong” ::

By the end of the second afternoon, I didn’t like Selma very much. I felt constricted, oppressed by the weight of history and injustice and unhappiness; it did not feel good, and I was only a short-term visitor. How, I wondered, does a person live with that every day? It probably explained the persistence of the unofficial, unspoken code of separate-but-equal everything, but conversations I’d had made me think the code wasn’t working for either side. I felt a cold coming on, and one part of me wanted to get a hotel room there and just crash for the night; another part of me wanted to get the hell out of there. I headed up the road toward Birmingham.

And so my white-girl, gringa, Yankee butt keeps taking itself to other places where it doesn’t “belong.”

Stay tuned for next week’s installment. . . .
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