Carolina Blue

By Jaeme Haviland

Carolina Blue is a collection of travelogs, stories and short essays taken from the author's journal about his time in the Piedmont area of North Carolina, as well as tales from his days on the road exploring the southeastern US.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jaeme Haviland
• Release date: Apr 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301825066

Jaeme Haviland

A native Floridian, Jaeme published his first novella "Groundfog" in January 2013. It was followed by a collection of travel essays about his exploration of the southern Appalachian Mountains and the Carolina Piedmont in "Carolina Blue". A second collection of essays and stories were shared with readers in "From The First Coast", as Jaeme re-discovered his home state. He has also completed work on a new adventure novel, "Goldhead", which is now in pre-publication. Jaeme's latest work in progress is "The Haunting of George Hill".

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Carolina Blue

Tales From Days On The Road In North Carolina

Jaeme Haviland

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Jaeme Haviland

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Table of Contents

Preface

Life in North Carolina

On The Road

Love and Hate In Gatlinburg

Mount Pisgah - Cloud Killer

Overmountain Rambler

Michigan – Finding My Father

Georgia On My Mind

Florida -You Can Never Go Home Again

A Thanksgiving

Christmas Cards

Skin Deep -Tattoos

Uzin

Summer Rain

Relative Reality

The Invisibility Rule

About The Author

Preface

What is past is prologue. - Shakespeare

In the beginning, June 15th, 1998 to be exact, there was a newsletter. I had just arrived in North Carolina from Tennessee, through a series of circumstances that had left me somewhat bitter.

I have come to understand that we can alter our response to change so as to benefit from it rather than be hapless victims of circumstance when change occurs. We can brace for it, plan contingencies, map opportunities, weep for what was or fear what will be, but we cannot avoid change. It is inevitable; it happens every day in small increments. It's only our perception (or the lack of it) that makes the manifestation seem sudden.

By May of 1999 the newsletter had become a permanent web site. I wrote in that format until the following year, when I finally decided that I needed a change.

I started this site almost a year ago, following an idea I had when I created the newsletter as an e-mail communiqué. Initially, I wanted only to stay in touch with my friends and family, whom I had left far behind. I was bitter about moving on, and despised my new home. The newsletter allowed me to vent, yet at the same time, I was able to share new discoveries with the people I cared most about. Slowly, I became accustomed to this place and with my situation. I have come to accept a number of things since then. I want to change the style of the web site so that I can go outside the lines if I feel like it.

The first post on the new web site, Tales From Days On The Road, talked about the journey we were about to undertake:

This is not only a journey through space, but in time as well... Sometimes I need to remember, because memories are all we truly own. Sometimes I need to measure my progress- not in distance, but in maturity. For better or worse, it is our experience that makes up who we are.

It is more true now than it was then. So it was that on March 20th of 2000, we set out together, you and I. What a distance we have come from that time and place where we began. That is the beauty of life on the road. It is easier to survey what has been done and seen. The distance rolls up on the odometer, the map marks our progress (or the lack of it). We often ask ourselves, How did I get here? The answer may seem obvious, but the question is usually meant metaphorically. Wherever we are, we are there because of choices. Somewhere along the line, we made a choice which led to another and another, which led us here.

I began to wander more than thirty years ago. As anyone over forty can tell you, the home you may wish to go back to no longer exists. This is not only a journey through space, but in time as well. Like Lot's wife, I have often been told not to look back; and even more like her, I have ignored the admonitions. Sometimes I need to remember, because memories are all we truly own. Sometimes I need to measure my progress- not in distance, but in maturity.

I forget why it was that I put my foot to the road so very long ago. Maybe it was curiosity. Perhaps it was the restlessness of youth. In any case, by now it has the force of habit. I am drawn by the lure of what lay over the horizon. I daydream about the discoveries and adventures that might be just a few more miles up the road.

A monk once told me a Buddhist parable that described the Truth as a shining mirror that existed in the heavens. For uncounted millennia, it shone brilliantly and all was at peace, until Man appeared. Ignorant of the Truth, he was afraid of his reflection and shattered the mirror into a thousand pieces. The shards rained to earth, and lay hidden for centuries. It is said that once in awhile, Man discovers a piece of the mirror, a part of the Truth. I guess maybe that's what I'm looking for- my piece of the mirror.

For a year and a half, I struggled to adapt to a new home in North Carolina. I felt isolated and deprived. Greensboro was a much smaller city than places I'd been used to living in. It turns out that what makes a place tolerable is the same thing that makes it intolerable- your attitude.

Life in North Carolina

August 9, 1999

Here in my home office, there are papers stacked up in half a dozen places: terse notes on the backs of envelopes, yellowed newspaper clippings, obscure pamphlets and crude photocopies of hand-drawn maps. Magazines are scattered here and there, and brochures seem to pop up everywhere I lay my hand. To most people, this litter would be just that- trash. But to me, each scrap of paper represents a dream.

For years now, my filing system has been me simply adding to the stacks of folders and paperwork lying in various strata on the daybed behind me. Old bank statements and insurance policies might float from desk to daybed and finally into huge moving boxes stacked under the table in the corner. Cardboard file boxes held the rest: yellowing tax returns, ancient letters, TV and stereo manuals- anything I thought valuable enough to retain. I've decided to actually devise some system of putting things away where I could actually find them again when I needed them. I wrestled two new file cabinets upstairs to the apartment in anticipation of a mammoth organizational drive. So far, I've spent very little time purging and re-filing important documents. In fact, after two hours of shuffling through things, the cabinets still sit empty and the cats are playing in the boxes they came in. It's not that I don't want to get this done; I just keep running into so many memories.

I've always wanted to write. I wanted to travel. For the last quarter of a century, I have taken the easy way out, more concerned with making a living than actually living. Along the way I have grown cynical and bitter. I wanted so much, expected so much out of life and myself.

I want to find what is true and good in life again. I want to have that same enthusiasm for drawing breath that I had at seventeen, when all things were possible. The world has not changed- it changed me and I don't want to leave it without trying to be everything I was capable of.

March 27th, 2000

Spring is working its way across the Piedmont, marked first by the tiny blossoms of pink and purple along the branches of red bud trees last week. Then the Bradford pear trees erupted almost overnight into fluffy white flowers whose petals fall like so much fragrant snow as the tender green leaves begin to emerge. Now, here and there in the woods on either side of US 29, dogwoods and apple trees show periodic bursts of color in a landscape still dominated by shades of brown. Spring has arrived and somehow I missed it.

For someone as sensitive as I have been to the changing of seasons, the coming and going of equinoxes and solstices, it seems odd that my body clock has stopped. It's almost as if I went to sleep one night in a winter state of mind and woke up to the scent of dewy green grass and the sound of robins chirping outside my window. How did that get by me?

Easter will be late this year, the end of April, almost a month away. It is as if the season has come early, like a dinner guest arriving too soon. I wasn't ready. The March winds are dwindling, like the waning month itself, yet the spring rains have already begun. My tulip bulbs have sprouted but refuse to flower, their own internal clocks apparently halted by some force of nature.

April 1, 2000

I followed a funeral cortege out to Forest Lawn today. I didn't mean to- it just worked out that way. After the bleakness of winter, the place looks like its been decorated for spring. Flowers are everywhere. Pinks and purples, white dogwood and tiny small blooms growing low to the ground, almost hidden in the fresh green grass. From a distance, they look like patches of lavender frost. Winter rye, dark and lush, springs from over the graves of more recent interments. Here and there, colonies of giant clover have arisen. I wish I could say that the shamrocks only grew over Irish souls, but I don't think that’s the case.

The symbolism of the season is strong in a cemetery setting. The cycle of nature is the model and mirror for the cycle of life. The unmistakable message of new life in a place of death is comforting. It needs no words, no interpretation. The entire universe can be understood in a single instant of Zen insight.

I am not infatuated with death. I'm just trying to understand it. In the process, I have learned a lot about life, and living. I would like to think that there is something beyond the veil, even if it cannot be proven. It would lend credence to our lives. I explore the supernatural (a term I hate) because I desperately wish for it to exist, but so far have to deal with the disappointing reality that it does not.

An old song I heard long ago probably says it best. Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friend, then lets keep dancing. If this is all there is, then most of us are wasting it.

April 5th, 2000

I believe any description of spring would be superfluous by now. It is a concept in and of itself, and done to death since the days of the bard. It has inspired legions of artists to attempt some immortalization of a perfect day. But it is a performance art. It cannot be captured adequately by word or brush, on canvas or in stone. It flows like a great stage play, changing scenes and players. Like true performance art, it is interactive and spontaneous.

Late last night I found myself wondering what our culture would be like without this season of renewal. How do the denizens of equatorial regions identify with all that is inherent in the mere mention of the word spring? Could we ever satisfactorily convey to some alien visitor the entire pantheon of beliefs, practices, and cultural icons surrounding the simple act of our planet tilting a few degrees each time it revolves around our sun?

Here in the US, we think of spring in connection with the Christian religious holiday of Easter, yet the celebration of a new season is older than the Roman empire. Eggs have symbolized spring and rebirth since time out of mind and the custom of presenting them as gifts has endured from the earliest societies. The truth is, over two thousand years of ever-increasing enlightenment and civilization has not dimmed that awe we experience in the face of returning life after six months of ice and snow. It is a magic that defies science and reason. Without it, our spirit and soul would remain forever in the melancholy darkness of winter.

June 6th, 2000

I've been sitting outside with a cigar, watching as the edge of night slips westward. One cat lies under my chair, scarred and skinny, with a belly full of Friskies. She rises only now and then to look at me for a chin scratch. Another cat remains inside sulking, yowling his jealousy every so often. My wife calls from work and we talk like teenagers in the midst of their first crush.

Our little friend, a small brown bat, is already dancing over the rooftops in search of insects, as he does nearly every evening, pirouetting and diving with the grace and precision only they can achieve, even in total darkness. Somewhere across the way, a cicada starts his grinding call and the bat flutters off to find him. Summer is slipping away. Smell the grass, feel the warm, moist air, listen to the cricket chorus one more time before it's gone. We will not pass this way again.

The crescent moon reminds me of a time when I would have taken a night like this and ridden my motorcycle into the heart of Nashville. There, slipping in and out of the clubs, anything might happen. You never knew who you might see. The city electric, with its neon pinks and blues, colored shadowy faces moving along the sidewalks of Lower Broad and Music Row adding just a hint of danger. It all formed a dizzying sense of being alive, of living in the moment.

A breeze carries away a puff of smoke and I find myself thinking about the seventies in south Florida. The nightclubs and jai-alai frontons of Dania and Fort Lauderdale remade life into one extended music video. It was in they way you could ride down empty streets late at night and hear the rattle of the trade winds in the dry palm fronds as the smell of salt air filled your nose. Even longer ago, a younger me would have driven down to a park along the waterfront, cruising the back streets of Jacksonville's San Marco district to meet friends, talk about the future and stare across the black waters of the St. John's River at the lights of the city on the other side.

June 28th, 2000

I had one of those episodes today where I think I'm somewhere I'm not. I have no idea what triggers these warps of time and space, but as I sat at my desk this afternoon, I suddenly got the urge to stop at a grocery store in Belle Meade on the way home and pick up a couple of things. The only problem is that this particular grocery store is in Nashville, Tennessee, not Greensboro, North Carolina. I often traveled down White Bridge Road, stopping at the store, then driving south on Belle Meade Avenue to Percy Warner Park. Cutting through those peaceful green hills to Old Hickory Boulevard made my commute slightly shorter and infinitely less stressful.

It usually takes a couple of seconds before I realize that I'm not in Nashville or wherever it is I'm thinking about. But it triggers a few more minutes of long-buried memories before acknowledgment of the here and now washes it all away. When I first moved to Nashville in 1979, I used to have episodes like this concerning places I'd left behind in Florida. There was a butcher shop my wife and I frequented in Fort Lauderdale and in the sixties my buddies and I had a party spot we used to call the quail farm out in Bayard, near Jacksonville. I'd get disoriented when I would think of a place I wanted to go, only to eventually remember that the place in my mind was 800 or 1,000 miles away.

Memory can be a persistent thing. I'm one of those people that can go anywhere one time using directions and thereafter navigate back without a map or any other aid. Like memorizing a song or poem, I have almost total recall of nearly every road, landmark and highway I've ever driven. It's a gift or a curse, however you want to look at it.

I miss a lot of the places I've been to, lived in, and passed through. Experience has a way of filtering out all the negative and enhancing the positive. I know life, like time, never stands still, things change. But in my mind's eye this singular summer afternoon, I stood for a few seconds in a snowy grocery store parking lot along West End Boulevard in my old neighborhood. Somehow, a brief snippet of a former life bubbled to the surface, hung there a moment, then sank slowly back into the darkness of the past.

There are a lot of events long ago that manifest themselves in the rear-view mirror. Some are pleasant, some are not. My only defense is that I was someone different than who I am now. I wallow in the good memories and do my best to force back down the blacker moments. I don't think there's much harm in that. Send me recollections of cold nights warmed by friendship, familiar voices and old songs. One day, I will even wax nostalgic for this place when I am somewhere else, someone else and I will remember those little things I clung to for comfort.

July 4th, 2000

At the Guilford Courthouse National Battlefield I circled the park to the spot where the climactic third act of the fighting occurred. Much has changed since 1781, when Cornwallis met Greene on a miserable March afternoon, yet you can still hear the echoes of the past out here. I walked slowly down the hill and paused near a small pylon marking the line of hand to hand combat. An inscription on it relates that on this spot a British colonel was killed by a Continental officer. The colonel's sword had been excavated from the red Carolina clay right where I stood. It was quiet and peaceful, with only a light breeze rustling the leaves on the hillock behind me. Wildflowers grew everywhere underfoot, nourished by the blood-soaked ground. The field was full of muted reds, golds and purples among the tall green grass. I began to envision the scenes of battle. In my imagination I could hear the whine of musket balls, the thunder of cannon, and the screams of men in pain and fear. Raising my eyes, I thought of that March morning, when the colonials surveyed the same tree line and saw hundreds of British regulars marching out of the forest, bayonets fixed, firing volley after volley. A blue-white haze would have begun to hang in the air above the wide ravine, searing eyes and lungs with the acrid sulfur smell of gunpowder. I turned and walked up the rise to face the Continental battery of six pound cannon. This was exactly what some British soldier had to confront as they charged up the same hill. To my right, the Continental cavalry swooped down a long green hill and over the small creek, furiously attacking the British right flank. From behind, I can hear Cornwallis' artillery firing into the melee, killing friend and foe alike to save the day.

A light sprinkle of rain touched my face and arms, bringing me back to this time. The field of battle was empty, with only the chirp of birds and the whisper of wind in the pines. It was high noon and a rogue gray cloud was moving in, obscuring most of the sunlight. The land had now become dark and haunting with its white marble obelisks honoring the fallen. How many lay buried in the mass grave beneath my feet this morning? This truly sacred ground.

August 5th, 2000

While some changes are cataclysmic, most often shifts in the direction of our world is accomplished in smaller increments, tiny things. We are sliding into the dog days of summer, yet conspicuously absent are the hurricanes, which by now should have begun brewing on our doorstep. Every year since my arrival here in the Carolinas, spring has come earlier and has been hotter than the year before. The summers have become wetter and milder annually. Things are changing, slowly.

I, too, have changed. I have grown comfortable in my new surroundings after four years. I was surprised to realize that when I was challenged with health issues, I wanted to be here, rather than my old home town. For better or worse, Greensboro has become my home.

To be sure, there are some things that seem never to change. As I stood out in the parking lot the other evening with my cigar, I watched the sun disappear behind the remnants of passing thunderstorm. Then, against the waning light, I saw first one and then a second bat, fluttering in circles. They arrive every summer about this time. I used to watch them when I walked the dog in the evenings. I miss his company; I don't often come outside after dinner now. Changes...we are always in transition from one stage of life, from one state of being to another. The world is an endless highway and life a perpetual journey.

August 13th, 2000

The weather has cooled off now with overnight lows in the low sixties. Our windows are all open and our orange tabby is streaking around the house, running in that bent-tail, sidelong gait that cats use when they're feeling frisky. The other cat that has adopted us lays contentedly outside beside my chair, watching the moths that gather around the fluorescent porch light. It was half-past midnight when I sat down with a cigar and a short glass of Lambrusco. I came out to see if I could catch the Perseid meteor shower. There's a full moon crossing low in the southern sky, so between that and the light pollution of the city, I don't expect much. Still, slumped in my chair, listening to the crickets is good therapy. Now and then, a late night reveler passes by on their way home, but for the most part it gets pretty quiet at this hour of the morning.

Puffing on my stogie, I watch the cloud of tobacco smoke waft straight up, forming a blue-gray nebula against the backdrop of the universe overhead. I can pick out the constellation Pegasus and the triangular shape of Cetus a few degrees eastward.

I watch for nearly an hour, seeing little more than a few faint streaks of light going from east to west. Once, out towards Perseus itself, I caught the instantaneous ignition of a larger meteor, popping like a cosmic flashbulb. But there are no dramatic streaks of fire across the night sky like I have seen before. It doesn't matter. More important is that for a while, I can revert to being that kid that loved astronomy. I remember lying in a chaise lounge in the middle of winter with my hand-held pocket telescope, trying to watch a lunar eclipse. Shivering in the darkness despite being wrapped in a blanket, I was inspired rather than miserable. Transported back to that time when the world beyond the south side of Jacksonville was still largely unexplored, I can momentarily forget my jaded cynicism to dream of the future and revive the sense of adventure I once felt so keenly.

When they look up at the cosmos, most people will say they feel small and insignificant. But as a boy scout, lying in the dark forests of north Florida studying the constellations, I felt much differently. To see all those stars and contemplate the worlds they represent, is to know that I have a place in the universe. We are made from the dust of dead stars, you and I. Looking out on the infinite, exquisite splendor of our galaxy and beyond is like looking homeward.

It is equally intriguing to think that in some cases, we are seeing light from stars that may be long dead. To survey those tiny points of light in the midnight sky is to look back into the cradle of creation. It is fascinating to consider that one day in the future we may catch sight of a supernova that occurred millions of years ago. I have often wondered if our corner of the universe was wracked by some galactic collision on the edge of time, when would we realize it? If the stars ceased to shine tomorrow, it might be centuries before we could tell.

One of the most precise astronomical calendars ever devised by the human race is over two thousand years old. Seemingly without the aid of modern calculus, armed only with the observations of countless generations, the Maya of Mesoamerica predicted many cosmological events that were not seen or confirmed until the twentieth century. Their accuracy in calculating the occurrences of both solar and lunar eclipses for over two millennia is unparalleled. I find it strangely chilling to realize that their calendar ends abruptly on the winter solstice, December 21st of 2012.

Coming back in to write, I stuck my head back outside around 330 a.m. to see what I could see. Although the moon was down behind the trees by that time, a high overcast had drifted in, negating any chance I might have had to catch a few more cosmic encounters. Just as well... I need to get some sleep, having caught myself catnapping over the keyboard once or twice. I'll meet you out on the balcony when we're through the light and back on the dark side. Keep your eyes on the skies.

August 19th, 2000

Summer's end is upon us. The apple trees along Cottage Place are loaded with fruit now, red and fragrant. Corn is tall and green in the neighbor's gardens, sporting tasseled ears of crisp produce. The nights have begun to cool down a little but are still warm enough to have the bats out hunting the last of the season's insect brood. One fluttered silently between us last night as we sat on the balcony to watch the moon rise.

I was out today with the intention of running some errands, but got sidetracked after the first stop. I wound up spending the rest of the morning in the Bog Garden. The place is always full of song birds and wildflowers, even in winter. The green canopy closes in behind you within a few yards of leaving your car and it doesn't take long before your eyes adjust to the deep shade, making out the camouflaged shapes of rabbits, chipmunks, mallards and box turtles. Here and there in the soft mud you can catch a glimpse of raccoon tracks from the night before.

Much of the trail takes the form of wide boardwalks over the marshy ground, but in a few places you can descend to the forest floor and pick your way into hidden gardens of birds foot violets, cardinal flowers and black-eyed susans. Huge wild rose bushes form vast mazes in the underbrush, with stems the thickness of your forefinger and rose hips the size of grapes. Showy masses of cone flowers line the banks of several small creeks that run through the park like arteries, the water they carry ebbing and flowing with seasonal rains. Some duck families have colonized the mud banks far upstream, avoiding competition with the much larger and much more aggressive Canadian geese that rule a large pond (or small lake- take your pick) from a gravel bar just offshore.

Feed the ducks at the end of the boardwalk and you'll soon see the other residents- huge, fat grayish green phantoms with monstrous heads that emerge from the murky depths to gather up the leftovers. I have seen catfish out there that could easily swallow newly-hatched ducklings whole. It makes me wonder how big they get out in the middle of that pond, the ones that never show themselves.

I offered them stale cereal this morning. It took awhile before some of them realized it was food. Most people carry duck bread - the ends of sliced white bread left over from making their kids lunches. I lit a cigar and walked on down into the forest, enjoying the mild air and dark pockets of shade. A green heron eyed me suspiciously for awhile, but after retreating to a bald cypress thicket, felt safe enough to start fishing the shallows again. The storm that ripped through the neighborhood yesterday evidently hop scotched right over the Bog Garden. Elsewhere up and down Lawndale Drive, huge oaks have been uprooted, enormous firs were splintered into kindling and even business signs were folded in half. The only evidence of anything amiss here was a plum tree that had been split in half by the wind. I could picture the duck families taking shelter in the stout walls of a nearby bamboo patch, the thick reeds swaying in the driving rain.

I really should come here more often for the peace and quiet, the scenery and the fellowship of ducks (and duck feeders). It never fails to recharge me, to rekindle that love of communion with the natural order. In late winter, it is one of the first places to honor the promise of spring and today, in that green garden still full of summer flowers, I heard the first soft whispers of fall.

October 13th, 2000

How many pictures do we have to take before we get that perfect fall photo- the one that is the sum of all the pieces, so astoundingly all-encompassing that it is no longer necessary to take any more? It would have to be a photo that embodied the childish joy of Halloween and the giddy anticipation of Christmas. It would have to have an artist's palette of rusty reds, pumpkin orange and the golden yellow glow of a mellow sun, slanting across a hayfield in the late afternoon. It would have the soft blues and grays of a foggy morning and the raspy texture of hickory logs burning on the hearth. The composition could only be one of homecoming and harvest, bringing to mind the sharp smell of wood smoke, warm food and good company.

Autumn always seems to pass by so quickly, as if in a single breath. The painting of a million