Coming Home
Driving home
tonight after the sun had gone down I was mesmerized by the darkness of the
open countryside. Vast empty pastures with only the occasional light winking
from farmhouse windows and distant cabins across the blackness. Peyton and I
met this afternoon in Blairsville to go see the movie, “Robocop” and have our
evening meal. The movie was quite entertaining and dinner at Dan’s Cuban Grill
was excellent as usual. The thing was the drive home from Blairsville by way of
Skeenah Gap Road. It must be at least forty five or more miles to our house
from Blairsville and I only passed a handful of cars which seems unlikely. Hard
to believe that so little traffic is even possible in this day and age but we
are way out in the country in the hinterlands of Gilmer and Fannin County. The
night was so dark and the stars so brilliant and perfectly arranged in the
firmament I could hardly keep my eyes on the road. I managed to steal only
quick glances up at the immense black sky and blinking stars above me. Cassiopeia,
Vela, Gemini, Orion and even Betelgeuse were up there beyond heaven doing what
they have done for thousands of years before I was born and likely before there
was an earth to look up from. The illusion of wonder was overwhelming for me in
my little car zooming along the dark country side on a cold February night, all
alone with no sounds but those coming from the car and the pavement. It all
most made me dizzy.
Coming around
curves my head lights illuminated the fields and pastures sweeping out into the
impenetrable obscurity revealing the occasional deer looking like frozen
sculptures with glowing silver eyes. The
interior of the abutting woods beyond the asphalt awoke with the brilliant lights
from my vehicle as I drove down Black Ankle creek Road to the t-bone intersection
of Big Creek Road. I turned left, drove a quarter of a mile and crossed the
bridge over the creek by the church and the cemetery above on the hill. Just
beyond Big Creek Baptist Church I stopped and stepped out of the car into the
night to observe more fully the expansive sky and the vast innumerable stars. A
small ghostly opossum secreted in the dry grass within a few feet of me
panicked and skittered away down the bank toward the creek rattling the dormant
weeds and making certain his escape down the hill into the anonymity of the night
with his naked tail hysterically spinning circles in the air behind him.
We moved here nine years ago from our home of thirty years in
Clayton County which was just south of Atlanta not so far from 285 and the
Atlanta airport. The night sky here, without all the ambient light of Atlanta
and the urban sprawl still fascinates me and I can gaze at it for hours. All
those years living in the urban environment the night sky was lost to me except
for weekends at Big Creek.
tbd
