A Name, a Place and a Fork in the Road

The first time my parents moved back home to the south Alabama town where our family has lived for generations, they bought a 12 acre place out near the interstate, tore down the remains of a weathered, ghost town gray, bare wood house, and built a new brick 70s ranch that I lived in for most of the rest of my childhood.

The one lane clay road up to our new house had a weedy green center stripe and needed a name for an address of record at the post office. Mom asked us if we had ideas. I suggested Rabbit Hill, after a recent show. Mom went with “Fleming Rd” to put the family name on it.

Before moving back we lived in a large flat Texas neighborhood with lots of small houses (not to dis another place where I was also happy but, they were little Monopoly houses, all made out of ticky tacky and they all looked just the same). Our Alabama homecoming was in a different kind of place where I wandered in the woods and over hills, climbed around on the limestone terraces that I thought looked like moon rock, and once or twice I went over to the semi-abandoned cemetery across the highway.

I didn’t know the proper Latin names of many native plants then (I still have a lot to learn), but I knew what grew in the high spots and the low spots, where the lichens and dewberries were, where the best Christmas trees grew (along the fence line and where the mustard colored puffball mushrooms would come up). I learned to cast a fishing line on the front lawn, and I lived there longer than any other childhood home.

The real Fleming Road of my childhood doesn’t exist anymore. Being close to the interstate, it was sold eventually and developed. When I’m home there, I forget to look for the entrance to the cemetery across the road to tell exactly where our dirt drive once was. The geography of my childhood is forever changed.

The Sense of Place

While growing up, I inherited my grandfather’s love for a Grancy Graybeard. I can still hear his mutt Peanut howling at the whistle as the freight train sped through our two horse town. My lifelong love affair with cornbread, boiled peanuts and hand cranked ice cream in the summer, my knack for making Divinity, my late in life appreciation for Lane Cake, these things and more are my roots.

Much of what I do and write explores the connection between places, people and things. I want to know all 5 Ws and how they fit together. How did it come to be that way? And, it’s all from the perspective of a country girl who grew up wandering country roads, forests, farms and shorelines. My curiosity keeps me going.

By Any Other Name

I was looking for a name for this blog last time the site focus shifted and went with KarenGoes.com for several recommended reasons, like fewer characters to remember/type, and being easy to convert to new interests in the future. I considered 101FlemingRd back then and even bought the url. I liked it because it was a part of my childhood, because it was home, in name and place. It was a little bit of an homage to that home you can never return to, and partly appealing because that place of my youth was at once both foundational and ephemeral. Fleming Road isn’t there in the ground truth anymore, but, it still exists in my bones. I bought the url without the numbers this time. I’ve found the right name. It fits.

The Journey

I’ve always done more writing in my head. It’s self-engaging, but you don’t have to do any finish sanding there and it’s really not actual communication until you put it out there for people to do with what they will. I aspire to communicate with others, but I struggle with organization. I move sentences over and over, change structure and order of things, end up having to check repeatedly to see if I managed to get all the subjects and verbs in agreement the last time ’round and then I’m still afraid it looks unfinished. I’ve recently read books on writing and joined a writing course.

When I saw Janisse Ray’s course, Journey in Place, I knew it was right down the orange clay, washboard road in my soul. It would give me some structure. I was graciously offered a scholarship and immediately revisited her first book. I’ve read all of the writing prompts, and done more writing in my head, but at three quarters of the the way through, this is the first time anything about it made it through my fingers, in to the keyboard and out in the ether. Still it has helped me.

It has been nice to see references to authors, scientists and ideas I learned in grad school, or from other places along the way, and to learn some new things. It’s been nicer still to see that a community of kindred spirits is out there. I’ve appreciated Ms. Ray’s unshakable optimism. I need that. I aspire to have and spread that.

Being part of the course has given me the chance to recommit to the blog as it’s own thing with broader subjects beyond the cycling video project and to do other writing as well. There’s this book that’s been running around in my head for most of my life. So, there it is. Yes, I do want to write a book. I have the structure and the plot, the theme and the setting, most of the window dressing. I just have take it through my fingers and out into the world, to wrangle it into something intelligible, you know, the hard part that makes or breaks all the rest.

The website needed, and still needs, a lot of cleaning up, and that has been its own job, but I’m on track and making progress every day. I think the site has found its forever name and I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with it.

The side columns will have my side hustles, soon, really, I promise. A girl’s got to eat and pay the bills, maybe even dream a little. I hope you can find something in each of my columns to make your day.

Until next time, have a glorious day and we’ll see you on the trail.