I left Chapel Hill after my run this morning and headed to Ft. Bragg. As I've said a million times, I'm so happy to be done with my service, but so freaking proud that I can say I served. There's something comforting about going back on a military installation and knowing that I can identify with the folks in uniform. At the same time, I have mixed feelings about not having to shoulder the same responsibilities (the weight of the world) as those men and women.

I was also struck by how young the jr. enlisted folks are beginning to look. And I've noticed more than a few gray hairs sprouting around my temples. Great.

In my mind, I went to Carolina

I picked up some workout clothes (Army PT gear) at Bragg and headed back down 95. I made the requisite pit stop at South of the Border (see photo), did not pick up fireworks, and quickly returned to the highway.

Next stop was Savannah. When I rolled into town, I decided I needed a picture and the first thought that popped into my mind was the cover photo from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. So I Googled the name of the statue, and was directed to Bonaventure Cemetery in neighboring Thunderbolt, Georgia. I punched in the directions into my GPS, saw I was only 5 miles away, and headed over to the graveyard.

Not there anymore

I got there at 8pm to find a bunch of locked gates and the cemetery closes at 5. Do you think that stopped me? I jumped the fence and started looking...and looking...and looking. I couldn't find the dang statue. After a while, I wasn't even sure what it looked like. As the day grew shorter and shorter on light, I decided to cut my losses.

Wouldn't you know, the cemetery is huge! All of a sudden, I was lost in a place I shouldn't be, running out of daylight...and did I mention that this was a creepy graveyard with Spanish Moss and freaky statues? And there was a ton of lightning in the sky.

As much as I wanted to, I didn't panic and found the fence and just followed it around until I could find my car just as the last vespers of daylight shone on this Georgia sunset. Disaster/weird cult sacrifice averted.

As I write this from Denny's, I also learned the following tidbit, which might have been of some use a couple hours ago:

The Bird Girl
The cover photograph of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, taken by Jack Leigh, featured an evocative sculpture of a young girl that had been in the cemetery, essentially unnoticed for over 50 years. The sculpture, which has come to be known as the "Bird Girl", stood on the family plot of Lucy Boyd Trosdal. After the publication of the book, the sculpture was donated to Savannah's Telfair Museum of Art to avoid disturbances by visitors to the cemetery.

Wow. Nice attention to detail. For the record, I did not break into the Telfair Museum of Art tonight.

Got Yanks and Indians on satellite for the ride down to J'ville (there was an hour-plus rain delay tonight), so it should be a smooth trip.

Labels: North Carolina, Road Trip