Another Reason to Walk

There's been a weird thing happening, since I got to Georgia and started this.

I posted briefly before, about how people down here got under my skin. The truth is that it hit too close to home. You ever meet someone who is an exaggerated version of what you see as your own worst traits? It's especially bothersome when you've been trying to improve yourself, and then you get back around the thing you're trying to leave behind, or go back to the place that made you that way. Like a New Yorker who's realized he's rude, crass, and belligerent after he leaves the city.

So I was thinking about that, and playing with the idea that I could see walking out of Georgia as a symbolic parting with that part of myself. Then I stopped at that cabin, and it was completely furnished with things from the 70s, which was the time when I lived down here as a child. And so I am walking to leave all that mess from my childhood behind too.

And next, I'm going to be walking through North Carolina, where I spent the latter part of my childhood with my stepmother, and Tennessee, which is where I spent the darkest part of my reclusive years, and where the whole tragedy with Amanda Shires and Sewanee happened. So I'm walking to leave that behind too.

And after that, Virginia. What then?