Way up in the mountains sometime after we were done being in the clouds we stopped to skip down a set of flagstone steps for a view of a valley that stretched green for miles. A long green puddle awaited our return. It snaked across the parking lot, saying, “I am your anti-freeze,” and we knew it to be telling the truth : the little reservoir was empty and a tell-tale dampness ran groundward from it.
The land around Dahlonega, Georgia is kudzu country. The Asian plant was introduced to fight erosion (a consequence of stripping the land), which it did, but then it overran everything else. It creeps across developed land and runs right up the edge of the forest. We saw houses perched amidst a sea of kudzu, abandoned structures drowned in it, long expanses of land swallowed and smothered under the kudzu blanket.
We chose a random mall for a pit stop in New Jersey and thought we were in the twilight zone. Everything smelled wrong, people moved not like people and spoke in exaggerated voices, the lights were disconcertingly dim and the mall’s bathrooms tested our gag reflexes. This experience, compounded by the general absence of left turn lanes, made us wonder if we had made a mistake in including this strange land in our itinerary.