Savannah: Chapter One

One

                                    “Just kiss me!”

Austin did this deliciously. It was the first time we kissed.  Ever. 

   

His arms wrapped me like a blanket. I didn’t want to let go.  This was unlike anything I have ever known.  We weren’t kids anymore.  We weren’t in our twenties.  More seasoned.

I liked him long before we met. I wondered what kind of quirks he had.  I imagined they were funny ones. 

In my dreams, I imagined falling in love with someone who loved to write, who eloquently expressed his heart and love of the environment.  This would be someone who stood tall for all the things he valued. The land.  The people.  The traditions.  I would learn a lot from him.

This is a man fully involved with life.  He really got what few people get. A spiritual environmental connection that all of this was sacred and had to be told.  There was an enigma to this man and I wanted to know about it.

He was a man both public and private. Even early on, I understood that.

I remember the first time he kissed me in the parking lot on the forehead. Unexpected.  That he had the courage to kiss me in such a delicate way said so much. Gently. Respectfully.  This was a man who took his time.

It was night and we were walking out to our respective cars a few years back.  It was Open Mic Night and he said he would come.  This wasn’t the first time I invited him to things in our community.  I felt our community needed his presence, his statute.

He read some of his work that evening.  I was in awe in his presence.  Not like a groupie but more like someone who just loved the well written, heartfelt word. 

People sang songs.  Some read their stories.  His were funnier than mine.  He being more comfortable up there on the stage; I a novice at writing and for now being more comfortable behind the scenes, arranging Open Mic Night.

I had always been the organizer.  Slowly, I was moving to do the work, not just administer it.    Doing that meant I had to come out.  I was unsure of my media in which to do that. 

Watercolors had always been a favorite, though I am not particularly adept at drawing.  I am good at color. A few pictures I did are hung on the walls in my mountain home.

I like design; the relationship between space and a few well placed things.  I like books about anthropology, architecture, spirituality and people with whom I can share them. 

Fifteen years’ ago, I wrote a book that began with two crimes I exposed.  After blowing the whistle on the health care providers, I blew the whistle on my twenty-eight year marriage.  It had not been all that I had hoped. After I got over the expectations of a life and marriage that was stifling the person I was becoming, I saw my divorce as the opportunity for a simpler, more creative, sustainable life.

We never talked about how we felt toward one another or deep things of that ilk.  I genuinely liked him but there was no chemistry.  I had met him when I was a very young nineteen year old.  He was just finishing college and about to start law school.

We did a fine job of raising our children and I think we worked well together.  I wanted more than that.  I wanted to either be single or in an authentic relationship.  Single is where I am now.

The book tells quite a story and needs serious editing.  The manuscript still sits on the shelf below this computer desk.  It doesn’t matter so much anymore that others hear my story.  I am able to hear it now. 

I thought about my first experience of Austin. A writer for a local liberal newspapers, Austin McNamara was a wordsmith. I remember a friend told me about his column six years’ ago. I wanted to know who was this man who so deftly crafted words that took me on his journey.  I had been asking around town for him for some time. 

It had been a sunny fall day when I first put a name with the face.  I’d been having lunch with my friend Benjamin when he saw him across the street.

 “There he is, the one passing Killer Creek Furniture. He’s looking in the window.”

Killer Creek is known for hand made, rustic furniture, all locally grown, harvested and designed.  A canoe sits where an awning used to be.   Hand hewn planks covered the floor.  Painted sheet rock carefully torn off in a ragged scalloped way along the horizon of the wall exposed brick laid eighty years before.  It was an end building with windows only in the front or back.  That was because it had been heated by oil.  Windows would have ensured the space would have been cold.

I kept my eyes on Austin until he disappeared into Killer Creek. It would be a few months before he was pointed out to me again.

“Ah, so that’s the elusive one. I want to meet him,” I thought.   

It wasn’t until a group of environmentalists got together to save our community from the North Carolina Department of Transportation plans to construct a road nobody need through an area nobody wanted destroyed.

There were a handful of us.  Some were writers, shopkeepers and me.  I’d been working for a watershed then and was asked to attend.  For the most part, I just listened, took notes. I was in awe of all of them.

Coming from a suburban environment, where the woods were already destroyed, this was an opportunity to save this pristine environment.  I was just learning about riparian banks and aquatic life. And the endangered Elk toe mussel.

I felt as though this was a ground breaking group.  After this evening, I knew I was meant to come here. I felt ill-equipped, unknowledgeable, a novice.

One fellow with long gray peppered hair, and brown penetrating eyes scoped out his strategic plans to save the forest.  I had never experienced anyone like this before. In the past, I was just saving a school from destruction, or relocated a car barn for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority in the D.C. area about to be placed near my front yard.  

Interestingly enough, the planning board to whom I plead my case is now my son’s employer.  Life has its circuity.

Then the township in which I was living in New Jersey failed to place the berm between my community and a road got my attention. Working with my neighbors, we found the soil for the berm.  The community enjoys a more quiet existence now.

I was used to a room full of lawyers, each more eager than the other to be heard. Equally talented, this group was less about ego and more about cause. The ones who got things done for the writers.

Everyone introduced themselves in a circle sharing their names and why they were here. Then Austin spoke.  Immediately I could feel this unassuming man and his connection to the land.   After the meeting, I introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Janel, Are you the writer of “The Sacred Mountain?” I asked.

His head was turned down, looking more shy than he had a right to be.

“Well, yea, I…” he said.

“I guess I am responsible for all this nonsense,” he said.

He seemed a bit formal but I knew instantly there was more to this story. 

A few months later, I saw him on the street and reintroduced myself. 

“You looked like you were in deep thought.  Am I interrupting anything?” I asked.

“No just getting some exercise,” he said.

We talked about this and that, mostly small stuff and nothing I remember as we walked down Main Street.

I came to the area where my car was parked.

“So long, thanks for the chat,” Austin said.

“Keep up the great work.  I love reading your column,” I said.

Over the next few months, we passed a few times in town and exchanged smiles and comings of the day.

I e-mailed him a few times about his column.  Then one day he gave me his private e-mail.

“Here, this one is easier,” he said.

I started sending him e-mails about environmental meetings that were going on.  I was glad that he attended a few.

The following year, I became a board member for a local grass roots organization whose mission was clean air.

On my way to see the executive director, I saw him standing in the lobby.

“Hey there,” I said.

“Hey back.  Whatcha  doing here?” he asked.

“Oh, I am here to see Benjamin.  And you”?

“I work here. Stop by when you finish with Benjamin.”

“Sure.”

Benjamin and I had a brief meeting and I continued down the hall to Austin’s office.

“So this is where the genius begins?”

“Not really.  I do keep the chair warm for them.”