Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere 8/1/2021

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

My husband called it.  He knew as he watched me take pictures of some of our adventures from last weekend what was coming. Several times, while watching me take the pictures, then watching me me look at said pictures and upon hearing me discuss these same pictures, he announced, “I feel like this is going to be a blog at some point.”  Well it seems that after us being married nearly 8 years that he might be ever so slightly starting to figure me out because, clearly, he was right.  It was simply a visit to my in-laws, a trip I had made before several times.  For some reason though, this time I saw things differently or maybe I just looked more. All the sights and goings on of this trip all meshed into this absolutely intriguing arrangement for which I am not even entirely sure that I have appropriate adjectives.  I will say that a large portion of the qualities were definitely particular to an outing in the rural South and the rest were just, well, unique. In summary, I guess today I relate experiences I found of documentable interest, whilst proving my husband right.

The best place to begin I suppose are with the sights that I saw that I wholeheartedly found unexpected.  There were a pretty fair amount of those, far more than I had anticipated. I knew that a large portion of the trip would involve exploration of the backroads on side-by-sides or UTVs. You see, this may sound odd to you but this is something we rural folk do for multiple reasons.  The first being we enjoy getting out in nature.  Here we have plenty of either slightly uncharted or utterly and completely wild chunks of land for such journeys.  We have a ton of available dirt roads too, hence my reference to slightly uncharted territory (since clearly someone had to chart it at least enough to put cut a path of dirt in it).  Also, to be moving quickly and stirring the air is extremely helpful in preventing a person from dying of heat stroke. Almost any amount of wind in the face is quite the balm.  So being in the middle of rural heat, side-by-side travel was the thing to do if one was to brave the outdoors.  Where we were this weekend it seems that, other than the very prevalent loggers in the area, a massive amount of dirt roads traversed just a big chunk of absolutely nowhere. I know we wandered down one path of some of the reddest mud I had ever seen and were told there was one house on the road. And mind you, this was not some small few hundred yards length of road making it a long glorified driveway, no, this was a long winding path through acres and acres of wilderness carrying on about its business.

We didn’t go down the road close enough to said house as to risk trespassing but I was significantly surprised to see down this road two things.  First there was an old church.  I cannot fathom anyone making a Sunday trek into the heart of the rural jungle to go to a service at this place but I suppose anything is possible.  That would be a definite faith commitment!  The second surprise was an old cemetery, not near the church and seemingly unrelated.  Now, if you have read further back in my blogs you know this was an absolute joy for me.  It was a very old cemetery and my beloved husband begrudgingly waited for me whilst in the afternoon heat that can only be accurately described in terms of convection oven, I moseyed through the greying weathered stones.  I saw unique names and some dates with amazingly long stretches in between and some with agonizingly short spans.  I actually teared up when two small markers were side by side,  treasures taken from the same parents; one managed to last two years, the other, only three months.  That is the thing about places like that, there in the middle of overgrown woods are tales of the full range of human emotion.  The soaring temperature almost goes away when I make profound discoveries like that.

I suppose the most astonishing curiosity was on another road in our journey to and from seeing the swollen Alabama River.  It all started innocently enough as an old home place being eaten by vegetation and time.  Again, old home places are another of the wonders that I adore stumbling upon.  Just like cemeteries they are riddled with stories to tell.  I was fascinated by the decaying decorative scrollwork. I couldn’t help but notice the sprawling oak in front and imagined all the front porch lounging that probably happened in the shade of those expansive limbs.  Then I noticed that a rather modern electrified fence encircled the place.  Fair enough it may be someone’s old family place and they didn’t want any hooligans speeding up the process time was so efficiently progressing.  Then I saw a goat.  Ok, that’s also reasonable perhaps this family place happens to fall within good grazing for this family’s stock. There was also the barking Great Pyrenees that insisted he was going to have my hide if I considered getting any closer to the fence. But then I saw the horned and bearded face standing in the old windowsill, and the second beside it, then the other peeking from the empty front door frame as well as the delicate hooves perched on yet another window.  Oh, so this is the goat’s house! Well I was unaware that it solely belonged to them so I spoke to the goats in my kindest tones yet they seemed rather appalled. Perhaps because I was trespassing in the front yard of their perfectly nice, be it aged, dwelling.  Once I saw this was most assuredly not an abandoned home we quickly moved along.  No one likes an ogler.

And so there were many revelations from the red dirt roads.  I learned that even as far south as we were, there were still in fact hills when I expected flatness. I witnessed what it looks like to see machinery cut pine trees like child picking a bouquet.  I became aware that even old houses that are empty sometimes aren’t.  I saw firsthand that little carved stones in the overgrown clearings can sometimes tell more moving tales than a library full of books.  Mostly I gained the knowledge that sometimes the middle of nowhere is full of amazing things if you just take the time to look.  As long as you don’t gawk in someone’s yard of course.