Greetings from Signal Mountain

New Orleans living - hard to know where it will take you. This time, it got me up on Signal Mountain with clean air and gaspbreaking views and fallen leaves. The trendy green grocery store in town may have spaces reserved for LEVs - low emission vehicles - but it don't fool me. The newspaper tallies how many public schools can teach Bible, and even the independently-owned used bookstore has rows and rows of Bible Studies and Christian fiction. No doubt it's God's country here, entirely opposite of the way New Orleans holds its spirits. Up on this mountain here, it's as pretty as God Himself. Folks here talk God and walk straight. New Orleans, on the other hand, is a swamped-up mess of trash smells where God wrings out his hand rags. At home, we keep our gods to ourselves but stumble in the streets full of the Holy Spirit.

My neighbor Lauren's boyfriend Trey grew up on the mountain, just outside Chattanooga, and they were headed there for Gustav, with their two trucks and numerous pets. At the last minute, I joined them. We barged out of New Orleans around 2 am last Sunday morning and driving all night through the Louisiana and Mississippi backroads. Trey brought his walkie-talkies to share between the two cars, and practiced his trucker lingo over the crackily lines. 10-10, Momma. Clearin on out. Not long before its batteries died, and we were back to cell phones. Then there was the lost-cat scare, when Trey's ex-wife's left-behind cat Babs had retreated so far into Trey's pile of stuff that he was convinced old Babs decided to try out the wilds of Poplarville. She was found, curled up under the snake's cage. Later that long morning of night, Hwy 11 vanished into the woods and we were forced to join our fellow evacuees on 59 north. I fell asleep for sunrise.

I woke up around 7, ready to drive, fueled by a chocolate moon pie and a cup of gas station coffee. As the drive wore on, I consumed two Clif energy bars, a cookie-dough Frosty with Wendy's nuggets, half a bag of jalapeno potato chips, and one of Lauren's havarti pesto sandwiches in order to stay awake. Just before the Signal Mountain exit, Trey's car ran out of gas and we had to roll downhill and wheel ourselves around to sputter to the closest gas station. That was right around when Lauren got to seeing things, but somehow, around 3 that afternoon, we made it up Signal Mountain.

It's almost a week after our departure, and we know now that New Orleans made it just fine, and even our raggedy-ass neighborhood finally got its power back. This is my second draft of my first blog entry, which I really wanted to write from this mountain. I say this because those bayou spirits know where to send us. We go to the mountain to suck on sassafras roots and wander in the wild magnolia underbrush. Bayou knows that we need the mountain's strength, that we need to remember the nature that shelters and protects, if we are to go back and defend her.