Pine

"In South Carolina, there's many a tall pine"

That is the first line of Hickory Wind, performed by countless people. My favorite is by Gillian Welch. It gets you that late afternoon feel that turns all the pines golden green and bark bronze, galvanized in the afternoon sun. I saw so many of them today. It turns out that there are plenty all along the Appalachian Trail (AT), and the trail marker, with the "A" resting on top of the "T," forming a picture of a pine tree. In Cherokee legend, all the animals and plants were to stay awake for seven nights, and among the five species of trees to stay awake to the seventh night, one of them was the pine tree. The rest were punished by losing their hair every winter.

Today was my first bike ride in a long while it seems. The last time I attempted a bike ride, I not only blew out my tube, but my tire wall. That old tortured spray-painted egg-blue tire wall, that I stole off an abandoned bike (quite comic, though sad -- an abandoned bike is always a sad thing, depraved of its only true function: to move. It was spray painted all these wild colors, and had been left for so long that last spring's seedpods lay in the deflated tire tread) in Clemson and then stole away to Anderson. It was my ticket back home. For this first ride of the spring, I didn't exactly start off easy. I had planned a fifty-mile ride with a near-empty stomach no less and just a camelbak to fill my belly up through Monck's Corner and southwest to US 176, which would take me through Goose Creek on home. It really doesn't get interesting until I get out on SC Route Six.

I knew my adventure had truly begun when having passed through the "Main Street" part of "Six" and the road split, to the right was Pinopolis Road, and to the left, SC Route Six sliced the pine forest asunder, all the way to the edge of the world, with promises of dry crisp vastness ever towards the horizon, and the only word I could muster, nay, the only word to muster was "yes, yes, YES!" I had my one blissfully quiet moment -- the moment where you hit that escape within your "planned escape" -- at the beginning of Cooper Store Road where no traffic passed by. Through the sunniness and green I quickly came to road that would waste a good bit of my time. It not only cost me daylight, but exhausted me. It was a set of hunting trails, mostly a chalk-white dirt road. At the beginning, I saw these small pines to the right. I could look just deep enough into the lined-up shaded rows to tantalize me into wondering what lush dark secrets lay in that "forest." Perhaps the secret of silent soldiers, lined up in rows, awaiting death, sacrificing their being for the lumber industry. I quickly began to wonder if all of the connecting roads to US 176 would be flooded. After all of that, I saw large stretches of cleared out land, with millions of weeds and grasses taking their turn at life, and always these eight-foot high pines to the right. There was an eerie deliberateness to it all: These small pines to the right planted in rows and columns, only being cut away prim and proper to make a clearing for high tension wires that march off single file over your head and out to the horizon and beyond, the chalk-white road. The path cut out for the high-tension wires, the grass was no taller than an inch all the way to the horizon. In all, it was strikingly unnatural. The prospect of man coming here, caging dozens of hounds (passing by the cages on the right was disturbing), and killing animals not for food but for sport, won none of my sympathy. All of this was but a moral wasteland in my mind.

Coming out of those hunting grounds, having hit too many dead ends, I feel put in good hands, staring up to the tall skinny trees, swaying vigilantly in the new wind. Even though I'm tired near to drowsiness, I press on. I give and I give -- pressing down on those pedals -- making my way back home, down Cooper Store road. The most crushingly-tiresome moment was when I approached on this field of yellow flowerings off in the distance, only ten times bigger and it would have filled the horizon, then I came upon the the most lush grass of my life, so soft and shining green, playful green looking with the sun to my back. The field continued to fulfill my Great Plains Fantasy. How I wanted to quit the bicycle and fall down, smothering the ground! Oh, those hungry tired eyes laying sight of it! I sighed and "wow"ed in desperation upon seeing those most comforting pads of vegetation along the side of the road. I passed a modest house with beautiful trees all in the sunlight, mosses hanging luminescent on a lone oak.

All this time, the golden pines lay silently to the left. It all was crushingly beautiful in the afternoon sun. When I finally reached US 176, my body gave up. I still had twenty miles to go. I didn't care anymore, I walked up Black Tom Road, whose beauty I had been chasing, and sat on the side of that road, I plunged my head back into the small ravine where the grasses grew deep and green. I was too tired to think about fire-ants, other insects, or anything. I just needed to put my head down. It was so immense looking up at big blue and stalks of weed destined to never reach above the calves. I must have been subconsciously thinking, "what if this is the last thing I ever see"?