It was a month after I graduated from college that I packed up my life and first drove to Warren County, North Carolina. Though it was my home for only two years, more than a decade ago, it is still overwhelming for me on every level whenever I head northeast from Raleigh-Durham, cruising into increasingly rural territory, cotton and tobacco fields lining the roads, the air thick with humidity (or "close," as I learned from my students to call it), the names of towns and roads eerily familiar, though they've long passed out of the active part of my memory. This visit was no different. When I was on the roads, everything felt familiar, though I didn't trust myself to totally remember where I was going, especially since the directions I gave to visiting friends at that time tended to be along the lines of: "Go about a quarter of a mile and then turn left at a brown fence next to a field that usually has three black and white cows standing around a small pond..." So now I have to check the map.
But the cows are still around, and the air still close and peaceful, and the colors still so vivid.
I visited the house, not too far from the school where we taught, that my friend E. rented for those two years. It is still standing and doesn't look too worse for the wear 12 years later, though unoccupied. I have strong memories of standing on this porch watching lightening storms roll in.
There's the intersection that I drove past every day that I came over from where I was living, at the point where I had to turn into the town center or continue on to the middle school, as beautiful now as it was then...
...and the little cottage on Lake Gaston that I lived in with two other teachers, nestled into the woods just like I remember, though GPS tried to lead me wrong and I drove right past it, unrecognizing, on my first pass. It's so much smaller than I remember...though I didn't forget how I was always scared of and watchful of snakes while walking through the un-mown grass around the house and down toward the lake's edge (where a new dock now stands to match the new, expanded porch at the back of the house).
The center of the county seat is more adorable than ever, with efforts to revitalize the area as an antiques and countryside get-away continuing--though both cafés in town were closed when I tried to go to them, and I ended up at the trusty pizza place where I had dinner at least once per week when I lived there.
I stayed at the guesthouse built on property owned by my friend J, whose mentorship as a fellow teacher at the middle school is no doubt the reason why I survived my two years there at all, terrible disciplinarian and 22-year-old baby that I was. On this visit, J took me to a local barbecue joint for my favorite southern eats: hush puppies!
We also met up with one of my favorite former students, who now has a baby of her own...
...and went 'coon huntin' with J's husband, K, and their dogs, who get practice "tree-ing" raccoons pretty much every night.
The whole visit was a disorienting blend of new memories layered over old. 'Coon hunting with J and K, I remembered doing the same 13 years ago with E. Looking at our house on Oak Drive now, I also saw it as it looked during my first winter in N.C., when a freak snowstorm dumped two feet of powder across the county, and the temps stayed so low for so long that the ice on the rural roads didn't melt, school buses couldn't get through, and the district closed down for two weeks, forcing us to then have school every Saturday for pretty much the rest of the year--and forcing my housemates and I to bundle up and hike more than a mile through the snow to the closest convenience store to restock on food and TP (after I drove my car into the ditch trying to leave the driveway for the same mission).
Or the time that J and K were going out of town for a 'coon huntin' competition and so left their two baby, orphaned goats with me for regular feedings and care, and I spoiled them so rotten they wouldn't stop whining for attention when J got home and she had to give them away so as not to be driven insane.
And, of course, the kids, always the kids. I spent two days in J's classroom during this visit, talking to her 8th graders about Africa. In between classes, watching the students mill through the hallways, I kept getting false glimpses of my own, 6th grade students' faces, as they looked 13 years ago.
A formative life experience for me, to say the least. And such an overwhelming and thought-provoking--in the best possible way--experience to return for a visit.
