Stina's Trip » Savannah

You know, it does feel easy here

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 05:11:54 +0000

(NEW ORLEANS, La.) I’m lightly sick right now, and the barista at this mind-bendingly cool coffee shop is kind of rude. But I don’t care. I have had a great night.

A few hours ago, I went on-air at Loyola University’s Crescent City Radio with a triad of freshman and sophomore boys, and we talked about everything from the Saints’ victory (I mean, of course) to strange, depressing news items from South America. James, the host of the Lambert Nation proved to be a nice guy and ended up inviting me on his show with only a few hours notice. After the show, he bought me dinner at the campus’ opulent cafeteria, and that move warmed my heart. How classy. Thanks, James, for the conversation and the food — and the late confirmation that my own college cafeteria grub actually was pretty mediocre.

On the drive back to the trailer, I got lost and found my way here, to Z’otz, an offbeat coffeehouse that looks kind of like a cave decorated by hipster artists. How can I explain this? It has multiple, interlocking rooms that are misshapen and filled with young people on their laptops. The room I’m in, which faces the street, is covered in plaster painted to resemble stone, and there are huge photos of Barbies in compromising positions on the wall. What’s really strange is that I was here yesterday and wanted to return but couldn’t remember the name of it or the street it was on. Yet, while driving around completely lost, I found it by accident. I love it when magic works like that.

Well, I was thinking that I would write a long, involved post tonight about those three weeks I recently spent in Savannah, but I won’t. Not just yet. My sore throat and foggy head are enticing me to find my way back home, watch an episode of 30 Rock and go to bed. And besides, maybe I’m still not ready for the responsibility of writing about Savannah. In no small way, that city felt like home, and I have always found it hard to write about the places I call home. My words always seem to pale in comparison to the complexity of the towns I love. Sure, I have written tons about Silver City and Moab and Arcata, but I always feel that they deserve more.

Anyway, thank you for reading. Nothing earth-shattering happened tonight, but I have this light, optimistic sense of elation in me and wanted to share it. When I feel in my skin, it’s always a surprising gift. These last few days, New Orleans has given that to me, and I’m in awe.

Falling in love again

admin — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:35:17 +0000

(SAVANNAH, Ga.) — You know that moment when you meet someone, and you feel a spark of electricity? You two are introduced, and you shake hands, and you look into that person’s face and you know, just know, that there is something important going on. This simply feels right, and you’re smitten. Minutes or hours or days later, you may find out this person is dating someone else or is not attracted to your gender or is a little racist. But the memory of your first interaction is still there, still pure, and I think, still important. It’s that first second of surprise and delight in which anything seems possible. You’re transported from the real world, and you love it.

I haven’t felt that way about anyone in a long time. But that was my experience of Charleston.

I had my little dalliance with South Carolina the other day, when I was feeling antsy and decided to run up the coast. I was tired and had very little time to spare, but I had this sense that I was going to like Charleston. Or maybe I just decided to. At any rate, by the time I arrived in that old, Southern city, I was ready for something magical.

Mind you, Savannah, the town I ditched for the day, is lovely and comfortable. I have been here for nearly three weeks, and they have been some of the best of my trip. Steve and Cindy Meguiar, the pastor and his wife who have let me park outside their church, are amazing people. They’ve given me more support and love than I ever imagined anyone would on this trip. Here, I have become a small part of the Aldersgate Methodist Church community, and people know me by name. When I go to the church’s nearby gym to take a shower, folks chat me up, and when a recent church breakfast was held, I was invited. Because of this mostly, I have a relationship now with Savannah. I would have never have guessed this was possible, but it feels a little bit like my home.

On Thursday, like so often in my past, I felt like running away from home, if only for a day. I wanted something new and dramatic. I wanted to be swept off my feet. And you know what? I got my wish.

Looking back, it’s hard to even pick out what made Charleston seem so incredibly romantic to me. But when I was there, it was heady stuff. Set on a peninsula, the historic section feels tiny, though it’s actually a decent-sized maze of old, wooden houses, high-end shops and an occasional cobblestone street. Spanish moss drips from everything, which makes the place seem like a movie set. I’ve been in the East so long now that I hardly even notice when I walk past a home with a placard that reads 1802 or something, but it should be noted that Charleston is chock full of those romantic, pastel-colored, antique buildings. For the most part, they’ve got deep porches and working shutters and elegant railings and fences crafted out of iron. Some have opulent gardens behind them, and all are far too rich for my blood. As I rode a tour bus through the area, I said, “Wow,” under my breath at the fanciness, as did many of my white-haired counterparts. As my spry, dry-witted, senior citizen tour guide explained in his drawl, these are antebellum structures. Then I kicked myself for completely forgetting what that meant.

“I hope everyone can understand my accent,” the guide said, grinning. “I do speak it the way God intended around these parts.”

He was a funny, crowd-pleasing, proud Southerner, and while he wasn’t raised in the city, you would never have known it. He talked about Charleston as though it was a family heirloom. To hear him tell it, this wasn’t just the where Stephen Colbert and the Civil War got their start. No, Charleston was basically the birthplace of America. As someone who enjoys a state with a big, healthy ego, I was eating this enthusiasm up.

After the tour, I did what any love struck person would — nothing. I just drank the city in with my eyes and strolled the small, scattered streets while half-heartedly trying to find various landmarks. I took pictures. I wrote down little thoughts in my journal. I people watched. As the sun began to set and the city started to sink into darkness, I stood by the ocean, just happy to be exactly where I was. I felt like I was on vacation, vacation from whatever this trip has become and will turn out to be. My eyes fixed on the pier in front of me, and I saw a guy in his 20s sitting with his dog. Each was looking out to opposite ends of the horizon. The boy had his hand on his pooch, and the tableau was so sweet that it was as though I had fallen into a Norman Rockwell painting. It felt good to have the time to notice it.

Dinner was what you would expect — fatty and meaty and delicious at a soul food place called Jestine’s Kitchen. The only big surprise was my reading material. As soon as I walked in, the manager handed me a copy of skirt!, a Southeastern free women’s newspaper. I had seen this monthly collection of non-fiction essays in stands on the street before but hadn’t yet sat down with one. But as I read and ate, I found myself giving it my complete attention. Taking in those short, deadly honest stories started to make me feel something. This was real stuff. I was internalizing essays about affairs and college admissions and miscarriages, and right there, alone, I nearly started to cry. Was it the subject matter? Maybe. But more so, I think that was my response to seeing people put their vulnerability into words. I kind of like that it made me almost cry.

Pruned trees near the ocean in Charleston.

With this bout of emotion fresh in my body, I walked through the mile of silent stillness back to my truck, parked along the ocean. Feeling a bit solitary in all that quiet, I called a friend, a Coloradoan who used to live in Charleston, in fact. I thanked him for all the tips he had already given me about the city and told him about my day. As he replied, I could hear some softness and affection in his voice. And while I enjoyed it, I don’t think that was for me, really. He was sending out love to his former city.

“God, you’re making me homesick,” he said.

For that moment, as I sat in my car, parked between the Atlantic and a row of beautiful homes probably older than my home state of California, I understood.

If I were to have slept the night in Charleston or stayed a week or tried to find a job there, I’m sure the romance would have rolled right off that sweet little city. But I wasn’t about to. I didn’t have any desire to see Charleston as a layered, textured thing. I didn’t want the reality of it to spoil my enjoyable little crush.

And besides, I didn’t have the time. Onward to Florida.

Nikki Hardin founded the newspaper skirt! when she was broke, middle aged and looking for some meaning in her life. Now the paper is all over the Southeast. Amazing. I saw this portrait of Nikki at Jestine's Kitchen, a restaurant in Charleston, S.C.

I wonder how many Laurens walked by this?

When someone grabs you and says, "Let's take a picture in front of this painting," sometimes you do. Charleston, S.C.

All that's left of an old factory. Charleston, S.C.

I ♥ the OBX

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:49:47 +0000

(NOTE: This was written on New Year’s Day)

(SAVANNAH, Ga.) — Today I jumped into the Atlantic Ocean along with 100 costumed Georgians. I loved it. That’s the Polar Bear Plunge for you, which happens every year on Tybee Island. Though it hurt to be thrashing in icy water alongside half-naked strangers, it was also beautiful. The temperature was shocking, but we were all in it together, figuratively and actually. I knew hardly anyone there — not the people painted as Smurfs nor the band of Oompa-Loompas nor the various, inevitable cross-dressed men — but I felt I shared something with them. It was just something goofy, something flecked with pleasure and pain, but that is good enough for me. I savor that kind of camaraderie no matter how it comes my way.

It’s six hours later now, and it’s silent where I’m parked, even though I’m not far from downtown Savannah. I am immensely digging the quiet and the dark. As I travel, I am constantly fighting sensory overload. Distraction and new things are everywhere. I thought it was great being in Times Square and standing at the CN Tower in Toronto and seeing the nightlife of Wilmington, N.C. But I also really enjoy solitary nights in my trailer, when I’m free to bake or read a book or perhaps knit while watching a movie I’ve seen before. Sometimes, I fear there’s an old lady lurking inside me. I can’t help how much I like the simple life.

Jockey's Ridge State Park. Nags Head, N.C.

I know that is why I loved the Outer Banks.

I want to apologize to those islands, as I feel I should have written more about them when I was actually there. Yet, while I was staying in Nags Head and Ocracoke, it was so natural and nice that I almost felt I didn’t have to document it. It seemed that much a part of me.

There, I felt like there was room for me. Like so many beach communities on the Atlantic, the towns that dot the skinny island slices of the Outer Banks are extremely seasonal. These places are crawling with people in the summer, but in the winter months, no one is hardly home. I was free to explore the dunes and run on the beach and walk through the empty residential zones without encountering anybody. It’s not that I like to be alone all the time. I swear it isn’t. I love being around people who welcome me — but I also need the feeling of discovering on my own. In Nags Head, where I first stayed, I took a lonesome dune hike at Jockey’s Ridge State Park and couldn’t get enough. The dunes were untouched and golden, and the sky was so big and open and bright blue. Like a kid, I pretended I was lost in some desert-filled country (one that just happens to always have a view of mini golf courses and pirate themed restaurants on the horizon). That freedom to be silly made me buoyant. Another day, I checked out the Wright brothers’ monument and historical site and got my dose of inspirational history for the year. I felt gleeful getting to experience all that solo.

An evening by Corolla, N.C., the upper tip of the Outer Banks.

I had no love for the commercial side of the Outer Banks, from the ubiquitous souvenir shops to the over-priced seafood buffets. Luckily, loving coporate glitz isn’t an OBX requirement. Being there at such an empty time allowed me to have my own experience, away from the neon strip mall quality of the place. And when I did hang around people, it felt, to my surprise, like I had known them for a long while.

Enter Laura and Chris, a brother and sister who invited me to park outside their home in Nags Head for several days. I met Laura through Couchsurfing.com (something that is definitely, completely worth you checking you). I liked her immediately. And we become friends about that fast. Whenever that instant connection happens, it’s strange and rare, and it never fails to shock me. I think it surprised Laura too, but I also got the sense that she creates that wherever she goes. She’s a friendly, gregarious lesbian chick who is bald and has no eyebrows due to a medical condition. She also grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness for the first part of her life, so yeah, she knows a little bit about being different. And she plays it off with style and honesty and not a hint of anger. She and her brother always live together and move a lot, and I got the sense that wherever they go, she becomes a minor celebrity. I was floored by this and kept wanting, but not really asking for, her secret. How does one become so damn dynamic? The 1998 middle school version of me was dying to know and still is.

Chris and Laura and my trailer.

Her brother was also a nice, sweet person, and it was hard to leave them both. But like always, I had to keep going. The day I said goodbye to Nags Head the weather was crazy, with rain and storm surges flooding the road that runs north-south on the island. It was only open for a brief time, and I squeezed through that window, though I probably shouldn’t have. I have never experienced anything quite like that drive. I grew up in Northern California, where there are typically cliffs or winding trails separating you from the ocean. But that just isn’t so in the Outer Banks. The only things that weren’t at sea level were the houses on stilts, and even those looked hilariously vulnerable against the power of the waves. The road was terrible, doused with sand and water. Still, I doggedly dragged my trailer down it, at one point going through a 10 mile stretch that was submerged in more than a foot of displaced ocean. In Rodanthe, one of the many closed down beach towns along the way, I pulled over, got out and stood on a dune against the wind. The gusts were so powerful that they could have knocked me over, but I was invigorated. I looked down at all those stilt houses in front of me and couldn’t help but smile. For a moment, I realized what a big adventure I’m on. Then a few people drove by, including a cop, and I got self-conscious and went on my way.

Somewhere in Ocracoke, N.C.

One freezing night and ferry ride later, I arrived on Ocracoke, the Outer Banks’ most remote island. I hear that in the summer it’s completely overrun with people, enough so that many locals try to make their living for the year in those short months. But during my stay it was thankfully, almost completely, deserted. Supposedly, I was sharing the island with 700 year-round Ocracokers, but it felt more like 30 friendly characters taking turns entering whatever scene I happened to be in (Don’t many tiny towns feel like that, really?). Cue the woman working in the general store, whose family has owned that place for decades. Cue that joyous couple, the one that owns Thai Moon, which sells some of the best Thai food I have ever tasted. Cue Robert, the guy who’s working like crazy to get Ocracoke’s first community radio station off the ground. I didn’t feel like one of them, but I was strangely comfortable around nearly every person I met on the island.

The last one I’ll leave you with is Ingrid, the 23-year-old American Swede who invited me to stay with her for those three Ocracoke days (I’m telling you — you must check out CouchSurfing.com). She’s the person I spent the most time around on the island, and though I’m sure she doesn’t know it, she inspired me. She grew up mainly in Sweden but also partially in Ocracoke, and this gave her a comfort with it of which I was almost jealous. She showed me around, pointing out old houses and telling me stories about how the families who founded the town still have descendants there. We went on walks and explored the beaches and the cemeteries. I showed her how to knit. We watched movies. This wasn’t dramatically exciting stuff, but it was great. Probably the lack of drama was what made it so.

Climbing trees with Ingrid, my Ocracoke buddy.

Ingrid was upfront about the fact that she doesn’t know what she is doing with her life, and I took that as a great comfort. It’s nice to be reminded how OK that is. Soon, she’ll leave on a bike ride across America with a few of her friends, but after that, who knows? Maybe she’ll go back to school. Maybe she’ll live for a while in San Diego, where her trip will end. All she was sure of is that she wants to travel. God, I understand that. It’s what to do next that can feel so daunting.

I wish Ingrid the best of luck answering that question for herself in 2010. And I, perhaps selfishly, wish myself luck too. I don’t know how you commit to one spot in the world after being so fluid and traveling for so many months. How do you choose — or does it choose you? I have a sense this is something I’ll have to learn this year. I’m already a bit sad about it. But secretly, I am kind of excited, too.

Happy New Year.

Jockey's Ridge State Park. Nags Head, N.C.

A sand castle — that just happened to be made of chicken wire and plaster. Nags Head, N.C.

Nags Head, N.C.

Orville Wright, in the spot where he and his brother first flew. Kill Devil Hills, N.C.

The Wright brothers' monument. Kill Devil Hills, N.C.

Out by the "lost" colony of Roanoke, near Manteo, N.C.

Little house on the sea. Rodanthe, N.C.

A view from the ferry to Ocracoke from Hatteras, N.C.

Ocracoke, N.C.

What I found on a walk with Ingrid. Ocracoke, N.C.

Feral cats of Ocracoke unite.

No quid were harmed during the making of this picture. I found this little, unfortunate guy on the street in Ocracoke, N.C.

During high tide, this beach is completely submerged. The fellow who started Ocracoke's community radio station was nice enough to take me out to see it. Thanks again, Robert.

Duck crossing. Ocracoke, N.C.

Me. Photo by Ingrid.

Ocracoke's lighthouse. Yes, that's an extension cord.

Abner the chihuahua and historic Howard Street. Ocracoke, N.C.

Ingrid.