As always, I’ve continued caching since I got home from the road. It gave me some time to reflect.
I ended my road trip through the Deep South in exactly the way I wanted to: neither bloody, bruised, nor under any other form of physical stress. In fact, as I mentioned a few times during the narrative, it was undoubtedly the most restful trip I’ve ever taken. Instead of driving around all night from county to county, finding courthouses and caches in the middle of the night, I made a point of either being behind or on the way to a locked door every day at sunset. Being in bed by 8PM seems unnatural to me, but it was the thing to do. Even though I came back with only thirty-three counties and missed one of the two courthouses in St. Clair County, I also came back with one of the razors of Jasmer, three state’s oldest caches, and an FTF so I have to say that the trip was a success, far moreso than the Debacle of Arizona four years ago (Four years? Are you kidding me?). Not bad for being restricted to winter daylight hours only. As a side note, once I returned, I realized that my photography has gotten more “efficient” and that’s not a compliment to myself. Where once I would take lots of photos of various things around town as I traveled, I now quickly do the courthouse and quickly do the cache and rarely stray beyond. When you’re visually recording things, that loss of B-roll can matter further down the road. That said, I did have other things on my mind so I didn’t do several things I would normally have.
Let us get down to brass tacks: I’ve spent a lot of time talking about my worries about where I was traveling. I think even the most hardened naysayer can understand my fear of traveling while Black in the heart of Dixie. The real question is this: were my fears founded? Unfortunately for all of us, I have to say that my answer is inconclusive. On one hand, I didn’t see a single indication that I might have to worry on the entire trip. I’m fairly sure that Lurleen Wallace was the most racially controversial thing I encountered. For most of it, in retrospect, I was just a dude on a road trip. Sure, I felt a certain heaviness, chains of history if you will, trailing behind me. And it did drain me of energy as I felt a hyper-vigilance, more than what I normally employ when I am away from home, certainly less than I felt in Jasper. But the places I went were ultimately little more than cities and towns like any other. Filled with people going about their everyday lives, not giving a fig about some random person. Maybe my fears were completely unfounded.
Then again, I’m not willing to go that far. From the jump, I arranged for things to be as advantageous to me as possible. I chose a time to travel that most people would be with their loved ones and not out on the streets, lowering my odds of exposure to locals. My primary destination was a city renowned for being a haven for Black people. My route was mostly along a major thoroughfare (I-20) and I spent little time in isolated or economically depressed counties where something rough is more likely to have happened. And, of course, I made a point of not letting the sun go down on me while I was out. With all the things in my favor, I think the jury is still out on how worried I should have been. But I admit that maybe, just maybe, the Deep South might not be what I expected. We’re living a quarter of the way through the 21st century, not halfway through the 20th. The same drives and motives that would have horrified my grandparents have been changed or diluted over the last 75 years. The children and grandchildren of the both sides of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950’s are moved by differing issues today. Even if there is similarity in their ancestors’ positions, the very ground they exist on has changed. That leaves me with the realization that much of what I was concerned with was the stories and events of the past that are not entirely reflective of the present.
I guess my point here (and I do have one) is that you carry what you bring with you. And so I did. At the same time, what is past is also sometimes the future. So what do all these words mean for me? It means that I’m looking forward to returning to Mississippi and Alabama (though they’re hardly on the immediate agenda). Sure, I felt weighed down by the chains of the past. But speed kept them from holding me down. As long as I keep moving (and planning appropriately), I might be OK. It’ll take me longer than usual to finish them; I’m still going to restrict myself to daytime and probably avoiding going in the summer for obvious reasons. But it’s all a marathon, not a sprint. I’m not going to finish the entire country in a year or anything (though I could if I averaged six counties a day) because, at my current publishing schedule, it would take me almost a decade to write and post about it all anyway! There’s no rush. Slow and steady something something.
And that’s all I have to say about that. I’ve got a Mega to finish working on!
Geocaching While Black 