Gary Lloyd's Blog

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Gary Lloyd

www.garylloydbooks.com

Gary.Lloyd87@gmail.com

TRUSSVILLE – Gary Lloyd’s new book, The Model City: History, Heritage, and the Hereafter of the Resettlement Administration’s Crown Jewel, is set to release on July 8.

In this thoroughly researched narrative, The Model City traces the evolution of Trussville’s historic Cahaba Project from its bold beginnings in the late 1930s to its enduring presence in the lives of those who still call it home today. Through historical insights and personal stories, readers are invited to walk the shaded streets, sit with longtime residents on their service porches, and discover the soul of a place that helped shape the unique character of this nationally historic community.

Lloyd, an author from Trussville, Alabama, began working on the book in 2022 and cites his involvement with the Cahaba Homestead Heritage Foundation, founded in early 2021, as the main reason for writing the book.

“I have always found intrigue and importance in Trussville’s rich history and bringing it to our city’s residents today,” Lloyd said. “This book proves just how nationally historic the Cahaba Project is, and how important its development was in forming the Trussville that we know today.”

Lloyd spent hundreds of hours in the Trussville Public Library’s archives room combing through old newspaper articles, Resettlement Administration documents, yearbooks, family histories, and more as his dominant research process. He also conducted interviews with dozens of former and current Cahaba Project residents. The result was a book that honored the history, hailed the heritage, and hoped for a hereafter of preservation of a nationally historic housing development.

“While I understand that this book will mostly be read by Trussville residents, it tells a story much bigger than Trussville and its Cahaba Project,” Lloyd said. “This book truly tells a national story through the lens of Trussville, Alabama. Any person who has found interest in the Great Depression and the years that followed, both good and bad, will find a connection in these pages.”

Several July events are scheduled for the book’s release. On Sunday, July 13 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Trussville Public Library, Lloyd will deliver a presentation about the book and sign copies. On Saturday, July 19, Lloyd will sign copies at the Trussville Historical Museum at Heritage Hall, located at 225 Parkway Drive in Trussville. The next day, Sunday, July 20, the Cahaba Homestead Heritage Foundation will host a Books, Bounce, and Barbecue event on The Mall in Trussville from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. As part of the event, Lloyd will sign copies of the book, bounce houses will be on site for children, and free Rodney Scott’s BBQ will be available while supplies last.

The Model City is available for $15 in paperback and $20 in hardcover on Amazon.com. It is also available on Kindle for $5.99. Copies are also available from Lloyd by emailing Gary.Lloyd87@gmail.com.

For more information, visit www.garylloydbooks.com.

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By Gary Lloyd

On a stretch of Highway 11 that most motorists drive 15 mph over the speed limit, I ease off the gas.

Glendale Farms has been in the news maybe more than any other topic in Trussville over the last couple years, and despite this inevitability, it still stung when Mayor Buddy Choat said it to me over the phone a couple months back.

“It would be more for the industrial side of it, something that would bring in jobs and create opportunities for either new companies or expanding companies to come to Trussville,” Choat said to me.

He was referring to a Site Evaluation and Economic Development Strategy grant application and contract with consulting firm Witt O’Brien’s. In it, the city committed to providing up to $3 million in matching SEEDS funds for the future development of 86 acres of Glendale Farms as a technology park.

The funding would be used for mass grading, drainage, utility infrastructure, and the construction of a portion of a new industrial access road for the technology-related industry within the park. The proposed road would connect to the east end of a new bridge and would run northward to access the technology park.

The city, Choat said, should know the result of its application this month. The first application was not approved.

If this application is approved, the turning of dirt, the adding of drainage and utilities, could begin this year. My twice-daily drive along Highway 11 that parallels Glendale Farms will be marred by utility trucks, dump trucks, excavators, and who knows what else.

“They paved paradise to put up a parking lot” is a song lyric that comes to mind.

When I met with the former property owners, Mary Beard-Foster and her husband, Rick Foster, in 2023, we traversed the seemingly endless farm in an off-road side-by-side. I heard stories of filling cartons with free-range eggs and stocking the five-acre lake with bluegill, bream, and largemouth bass. Some of the cattle were favorites, notably Georgie, Roscoe, Sweet Pea, and Buford. Beard-Foster’s grandfather started the farm in 1936, and her dad took it over in 1973. She inherited it in 2019 when her father died. She said that a newer tomorrow was appropriate because she wanted to spend more time with her son, his wife, and granddaughters.

“Our journey is over,” she said. “The journey for a newer tomorrow for it is there. That’s how I look at it.  It’s been incredible for me in my life. I would love for every kid in the world to experience what I had at this farm.”

Me, too.

“Progress” is the word I hear when something new comes along, in Trussville and in many places. I will always struggle with that word. What truly is “progress”? Buildings? Pavement? Jobs? Doing it all as quickly as possible? I am one person, but I think we have enough “progress.”

A year ago, I stopped along Glendale Farms Road and watched the cattle devour hay. One of the cows, a white one spotted on its sides with black dots, roughly rubbed its neck and top of its head on a rusty flatbed that held extra hay. I worried about jagged shards of metal injuring the cow.

Can we leave the cows and picturesque land, buy a new flatbed, and call that progress?

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

By Gary Lloyd

I wrote this back in October, after the first sunrise of the fall that required a hoodie, but you’re reading it now, likely after Sonny has celebrated his 10th birthday.

If you don’t know Sonny by now, let me introduce you. He’s my lab-hound mix, a 75-pounder who beat surefire megaesophagus as a 1-year-old, who barks at anything that moves, who was my nonfiction protagonist in a 2020 book.

Every Jan. 1, his birthday, we go for a sunrise hike. A new year does not get off to the right start for me without hiking some Birmingham-area hills with Sonny. We had the opportunity to sneak one of those hikes back in October, and like every time we go, it was tiring yet refreshing. It’s quiet, secluded. The patter of squirrel and chipmunk feet on fallen leaves are loud enough to make you think deer are nearby. Traffic is reduced to a faded hum, and the birds, especially the crows, are loud.

Orange leaves have scattered the ground, covering the pine needles and mud, giving the wooded trail a lava-like appearance. We found a new path that Saturday morning in October, and we were eager to follow it. Something about feeling slightly lost and finding your way back without Google Maps can make you feel alive.

Mostly, we just noticed. We lunged up hills and crept down slick rocks. I carefully stepped across thick tree roots while Sonny hopped over them. We – OK, just me – cursed the uninterrupted call of the crow, which is downright annoying. We avoided poison ivy and holes in the ground. A fallen silt fence that lets you know, especially these days, that you’re never too far from whatever folks deem “progress,” is encroaching, threatening. I despise coming across those silt fences, or any manmade trash.

Sonny has reached that double-digit age now, no small feat for a large dog who, according to a brash veterinarian, had his days were numbered as a 1-year-old with megaesophagus. So, yes, I’m cognizant of these hikes now, and I guess my own also-increasing age. We don’t take the most mountainous trail at DeSoto State Park anymore. Our hourlong hikes, by my choice, have been reduced to 45 minutes, with several water breaks.

But Sonny, like he always has, surprises me. He surprised me by living. He surprises me by winking back at me from the couch. He surprises me by how long he can bark at literally no one without stopping. He surprises me that, after 45 minutes, he longs to continue deeper into the woods. On that October morning, he pulled me along as if he was three years old again, his red leash turning my knuckles white. Who is walking who?

At one point on the hike, as we descended a relatively steep hill, he abruptly stopped and looked back at me. He just gazed. How sweet, I thought, that he was allowing me the time I needed to ease down the hill without falling, that he was concerned so much about my wellbeing.

I’m not, however, that naïve. I knew he was eager just to keep going.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

By Gary Lloyd

Some of my earliest memories come from the uncomfortable seat of a green Huffy bike, from the soaked rubber of an inner tube in Logan Martin Lake.

As a child of the ‘90s, I grew up riding anything I could. Many of you did, too. Flying down hills on bikes. Flailing in the air after a rough wave on the lake. Falling off skateboards and failing to slow down on roller blades. Flipping the occasional six-gear Ariens riding lawnmower.

That last one might just be me.

Anyway, I think my son is now at the age when wheels and speed exceed any fear of falling or crashing. Bikes rule. Monster trucks are the coolest. Dump trucks and garbage trucks are must-see road attractions. What a time that is. I remember it all well. That green Huffy bike I rode until I outgrew it, probably daily. The same goes for a white Haro bike I got for a birthday years later. Before you can turn 16 and hit the road in some hand-me-down Honda, a bicycle represents childhood freedom.

Freedom to leave home on your own. Freedom to choose to turn left down Reid Drive or right down into the cul-de-sac of Cooper Avenue. Freedom to sing aloud any of your favorite songs of the day. I don’t remember what all I belted out of tune from the seats of that Huffy or Haro, but I remember a buddy and I hollering the lyrics to Smash Mouth’s “All Star” moments before a Logan Martin Lake wave expelled us from an inner tube into the Alabama sky.

Now, I’m seeing my son reach this boyhood milestone. It started with an indoor balance bike. Then came Big Wheels. Now, he has an outdoor balance bike, essentially a regular bicycle, sans the pedals. He is a natural, with tremendous balance. He went fast before he took his time. As Albert Einstein once wrote, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Lord, does he keep moving. He rides this bike before school and again as soon as he comes home in the afternoon. On weekends, he is outside cutting the corner between the driveway and nearby sidewalk before 7:30 a.m. His excitement is impossible to contain. I often must remind him that it is still early in the morning, that the neighbors might still be asleep.

What really got me recently was I could hear him approaching from behind me on the sidewalk beside our house, about 30 minutes before I took him to school. I knew that feeling as a boy, that propelling myself to create wind in my wake. He was free. He was singing.

“Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper

Light in the darkness, my God

That is who You are

Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper

Light in the darkness, my God

That is who You are”

While I sang lyrics about not being the sharpest tool in the shed and every song off the Linkin Park “Hybrid Theory” album, my kid was passing by me while singing worship music.

It may have been early in the morning, but he got to sing that one as loudly as he liked.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

By Gary Lloyd

The Boston Celtics draw basketball fans from all over the country, and for the last two seasons, I’ve driven to Atlanta to see my favorite green-clad NBA team take on the Hawks.

I’ve heard Celtics fans standing in winding State Farm Arena lines speak with thick northern accents about how T.D. Gaaahhhden is wicked bettaahhh than other arenas, and others who said the drive south on Interstate 85 from South Carolina in their F-150 was “all right, I reckon.” I go to see the Celtics, of course, but I leave early enough to see some sights.

For almost an hour last year, I wandered around Centennial Olympic Park, a large park built in the 1990s as part of the infrastructure upgrades for the 1996 Summer Olympics. The wind tunnel created by the surroundings landmarks – Georgia World Congress Center, College Football Hall of Fame, State Farm Arena, CNN Center, Georgia Aquarium, and more – made it difficult to keep my green hat on my head. I circled the park slowly, taking time to read the “1996 Summer Olympics” historic marker. If I were a moth, historical markers would be the flames. I read names on commemorative bricks and took photos of the Richard Jewell Remembrance memorial in the fountain basin, located near the spot where a pipe bomb was detonated by a domestic terrorist in the wee hours of July 27, 1996, during a late-night concert.

In September, I came back to Atlanta for the PGA Tour Championship with my dad and brother. I was struck by the new Hank 565 apartment complexes surrounding the former Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium location, which was demolished in 1997 to make way for a parking lot for the then-new Turner Field, which is now home to the Georgia State football team. The skyline I once knew is gone. It’s how I felt driving down Paul W. Bryant Drive for last year’s Alabama High School Athletic Association Super 7, when the Tuscaloosa clouds were blotted out by apartment buildings that seemed to rival the height of Bryant-Denny Stadium Upper Level 4.

There might be apartments, another new Publix, yet another Starbucks, another brick-this and brick-that, but there is also preservation. Centennial Olympic Park has been preserved and is an amazing testament to local and national history, tragedy, and remembrance. The same can be said for Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium which, yes, was demolished, but the retaining wall over which Hank Aaron’s record 715th home run – still the record-holder for home runs, as far as I’m concerned – sailed over in 1974. It is a literal parking lot for Georgia State football games, for Tour Championships, and more, but that section of the wall is still there, a modest baseball-shaped sign adorning it that reads “Hank Aaron Home Run 715, April 8, 1974.”

“Progress” is a word I often struggle with. What does it truly mean? Does it mean more commercial businesses? More convenience? More overrunning of current infrastructure? Call me a curmudgeon, a get-off-my-lawn old man, but I enjoy finding these preserved historical spots across Alabama, Atlanta, and the country. I can’t get enough of them.

I’ll return to Atlanta this month to see the Celtics hopefully beat the Hawks. I wonder what I’ll find this time.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

By Gary Lloyd

Each mailbox, some 20 feet apart, others 35, is a can’t-miss historic landmark around here. I suppose the yellow fire hydrants are, too.

Every sewer top is a mountain to leap from, only to turn back to their deep openings in the ground to take in whiffs of bags of wet grass, rainwater, and the occasional Chick-fil-A bag. Every left-outside basketball should roll, every bicycle pedaled. Two small yard signs adorned with fluttering balloons for some special occasion – graduation, maybe, or birthdays – are like miniature scarecrows in one yard, so Sonny tugs his red leash a bit harder, and growls.

Sonny is older now, pushing 10 years old, so that pull on the leash isn’t what it once was, but his need to let all of Trussville know his daytime whereabouts remands us to the dark. We have been walking laps around sections of our neighborhood most every night for a few months, me to break up lengthy writing and video assignments that keep me stuck at a laptop, and Sonny to stretch brown legs that have pounded, pranced, and propelled around Trussville pavement for almost a decade.

I notice that we look down a lot, Sonny and me, at pee-stained mailboxes and fire hydrants, at forgotten basketballs, at bicycles that will be covered in morning dew. We see other dogs’ excrement that lazy people left piled in others’ yards. We look down necessarily, to some degree, because folks in the neighborhood Facebook group have seen snakes recently, and mild nights feel likely to encounter Mr. No Shoulders. We stare, not Sonny but you and me, into the blinding glow of iPhones while we walk mere feet from speeding motorists who, most likely, are staring into those same dangerous glows.

Each night, we make a specific right curve in our neighborhood that opens to an expansive horizon view of the moon, stars, and Southwest 737s on their final descent to nearby Birmingham. It’s as if a curtain of brick homes is peeled away, revealing our galaxy.

“Many men walk by day; few walk by night,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in his Journal on July 16, 1850. “It is a very different season. Instead of the sun, there are the moon and stars…” Thoreau goes on and on to describe the croaking of frogs, potatoes standing up straight, conspicuous shadows of objects, and much more.

Thoreau, of course, wrote more about the night, specifically in the appropriately titled Night and Moonlight.

“Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn? – to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.”

I look forward to that dark curve on each walk with Sonny because it’s a daily reminder, even if it is 15 hours into my day at 9 p.m., to stop looking down and start looking up. My hope, my goal, is that each subsequent morning reveals something to my soul.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

By Gary Lloyd

A decade ago, I’d be at a couple baseball games a week.

I would bring two printed rosters, a three-subject college-ruled notebook, three black-ink pens, a tape recorder, and Lord knows what else. I remember freezing to a Gardendale High School bleacher at a doubleheader in April 2014, sweltering in a duck-blind of a press box at Pinson Valley High School, and withstanding a thrown cap to the back of the neck from a fan who didn’t even have a son on the team.

As a full-time reporter who covered it all – Monday school board meetings, Tuesday city council meetings, Wednesday business stories, and Thursday crime – pulling up a press box chair or sliding onto a cold bleacher seat felt like a one-night vacation.

Now that I infrequently freelance, I make it to fewer high school baseball games. Maybe one per year. If that. This February, I trekked to Briarwood Christian School to see Hewitt-Trussville High School take on the Lions in search of head coach Jeff Mauldin’s 700th career win. Naturally and predictably, my attendance jinxed him. Briarwood, no stranger to great baseball, won. Superstitions in baseball? Who knew?

But that night, there to cover something that would have happened after the seven innings finished, I spent the game scribbling some observations, fewer stats, and generally keeping my notebook closed. I watched a man salute statue-still during the National Anthem. A Briarwood student, somehow appearing unfazed by the nerves that come with it, sang that Anthem beautifully. I watched as Hewitt-Trussville’s Grayson Pope, injured in June 2023 during a thunderstorm, shake hands and chat with Briarwood head coach Steve Renfroe. A woman, maybe a parent or teacher, sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

Despite my reason for attending the game not coming to fruition, it was worthwhile. I took a photo of a dipping sun over a Briarwood player taking swings in the batting cage, and while I am no photographer, I am proud of it. I got to catch up with a few folks I hadn’t seen in a while. I got to watch baseball without the stress of painstakingly keeping statistics and constantly Tweeting updates. I didn’t get hit in the back of the neck by a flung cap.

The game was sloppy yet competitive, slow yet compelling. Briarwood won, 7-6. Sidebar: Why must we speed up baseball games at the Major League level? Why do you want to go home sooner? Have you watched baseball? I want more, not less.

Anyway, neither the Lions nor Huskies quit on that game in February. The game truly meant nothing for playoff positioning – it was only Hewitt-Trussville’s seventh game of the 2024 season, and the programs compete in different classifications – and Hewitt-Trussville subsequently reeled off six straight wins and proved victorious in 12 of its next 13 games without me staring down from a top bleacher seat. I suppose Coach Mauldin prefers I stay home. Those superstitions, you know?

Now that I can finally, after years of staring into a book of stats during games and flipping through roster pages, keep my eye literally on the ball, I don’t know that I can stay away.

I suppose it’s a brand new ballgame these days.

I think I like it.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

It’s time to face the music.

Literally.

Before this spring, I hadn’t been to a live concert in five years. Had it really been that long? Wow. Well, when your first child is born and two months later the COVID-19 pandemic rears its ugly head, time tends to fly.

Anyway, my wife and I decided, after half a decade, to drink the 200-milligram caffeine drinks at 3 p.m., shake off their jitters, drive straight for downtown Birmingham traffic, and get in the fray. Twice. In a week. So much for dipping our toes in the water.

First, we attended the March 16 concert at Legacy Arena in Birmingham that featured Dillon Carmichael, Justin Moore, and Cody Johnson. Aside from a slowdown on Interstate 59, parking was a breeze. I was shocked by it. We found a restaurant to eat dinner and somehow were seated approximately 17 seconds before a wave of Carhartt-clad folks came rushing in.

As for the concert, it was awesome. Carmichael sang about family and pickin’ up girls. Moore, who we had seen previously at Oak Mountain Amphitheater, rocked, as usual. The man is a storyteller at heart, and I think that’s why I like him so much. Johnson came on stage about the time I brush my teeth before bed on Saturday night. After a song or two, he said something to the effect of “For the next 90 minutes, we’re going to play authentic country music.”

Authentic country music? Great. Ninety minutes? Come on, Cody, I’m in my mid-30s.

Six days later, we drove Interstate 59 South back to Legacy Arena, this time for Zach Bryan. No slowdowns this trip. Parking was easy. We had reservations for the meat sweats at Texas de Brazil. Salad bar? Fries? Rolls? No, no, and no. Those appetizers and sides have no place in such a wondrous place.

I bought a beer and bottled water once inside Legacy Arena. I opted for the six-month, interest-free payment plan. By the time you read this, I’ll only have two months left on this payment plan, and I highly advise it.

Bryan, my favorite artist of the last five years, was fantastic. The stage for his concert was placed in the middle of Legacy Arena, and he paced from one corner of the black square to the other so that he sang facing each section of the crowd. Genius. I recorded him playing “Open the Gate,” my son’s favorite song, the second song of Bryan’s 25-song set. He played for just over two hours.

After the song “Quittin’ Time,” Bryan and the band exited the stage, disappearing into some dark tunnel. The crowd remained and cheered. It was deafening. A few minutes later, all the band members returned. An encore. Everyone knew it was coming, because Bryan always ends his concerts by playing the song “Revival” for about 12 minutes straight. The chorus is repeated a dozen times, and each band member is called by name and plays his instrument solo.

“We’re having an all-night revival!” Bryan belted, sometime after 11:15 p.m.

It’s an encore unique to Bryan, and I love it. Don’t get me wrong.

The crowd roared.

I think I yawned.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

By Gary Lloyd

I wasn’t driving 88 mph, but I did go back in time.

I suppose I’ve done it quite a few times. I’ve driven those Queenstown Road curves until I signal left onto Reid Drive, a spot where if you are driving something smaller than a truck and don’t press the brake hard enough, you will bottom out. I promise.

To the immediate left is what appears to be the same slope of pine straw that a buddy and I hit at full speed on our Huffys and Haros, hoping for enough air to look cool. I’m not sure we ever cleared enough to jump over a three-ring binder.

One of my best childhood friends lived in a house on the right, and it’s still the same greenish-teal color, still the same chain-link fence that contained a dog that I loved as my own. Next door is a van in the driveway that seems as if it hasn’t moved in more than a decade, and beyond it a backyard where a block party culminated in a kid-friendly karaoke competition where I definitely did not lip-sync to a Destiny’s Child song in the early 2000s. Thank God that cell phones with super-high-resolution cameras didn’t exist back then.

A couple houses up sits a cracked-off chunk of concrete, resting slanted between the road and a driveway, that a friend and I often used as a ramp for our skateboards and BMX bikes, before we had Motorola Razrs and learner’s permits. The basketball goal that was erected atop a tall driveway a few hundred feet up the street on the left is somehow still there, an 11-foot goal – regulation in the NBA is 10 feet – that sent me home with sore arms several times per week in the summer.

Cars are still parked on the road, despite long driveways and double garages. Hardly any houses have been repainted, as best I can tell. None have been demolished or added onto. This street isn’t just still Reid Drive, but 2004 Reid Drive, for the most part, which amazes me, given the significant changes we’ve seen here in the last 20 years.

I drove Reid Drive one evening recently, after the sun had gone down. Daylight saving time forever, by the way. As I ascended the steep hill that I somehow could once pedal up on a BMX bike in fewer than 15 seconds, I came to my childhood home. The floodlight wasn’t on, but I didn’t need a burning bulb to remember every concrete crack I dribbled a Wilson basketball over in my youth. The brick mailbox was the same, and the front yard was somehow smaller than I remembered. The wooden privacy fence needed some posts replaced, and all needed a fresh coat of chestnut brown, but it strangely made me happy that they were just as they had been a decade ago.

Only one light in the street-facing portion of the home was on as far as I could tell, the bedroom that first was my brother’s but was ultimately mine in high school.

Maybe some teenager was inside, spending a Friday night watching NBA games and writing about sports.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.

By Gary Lloyd

My wife is awesome, so let’s just lead with that.

For my birthday, she booked a three-day, two-night stay for me and our dog, Sonny, in a Mentone cabin, five minutes from DeSoto State Park. Sure, she’d have been my first choice over the dog, but I don’t think our four-year-old is quite old enough to be man of the house. Maybe next year.

So, the dog and I drove northeast and proceeded to have the quickest slow weekend I’ve ever experienced. We checked in two-and-a-half hours early, and we went hiking as soon as I could unpack. I grilled a ribeye and steak bites for Sonny that night, and we watched football as night fell.

We made our way to DeSoto State Park the next morning, where a light drizzle fell before we hiked almost five miles in two hours. I saw 30 deer and zero people in the woods, which was tremendous. It was refreshing to be somewhere the people aren’t, where bulldozers aren’t pushing tree stumps and green away to make room for concrete and bricks. It was nice that the steps in the woods were made from tree roots and stone, and that the waterfalls were natural instead of powered by electricity and illuminated by LED lights.

I wrote this column in the afternoon and rushed through most of it because the hot tub wouldn’t stop enticing me with its rumbles. I grilled more steak because what is a weekend getaway without steak at every meal?

That night, our last night in Mentone, I spent a lot of time writing. Another story, a book project I’m seemingly never going to finish, and planning for more content were all things I touched on. Had I never figured out the Amazon Fire TV Stick – my wife has the technological know-how, and I do not – I’d have written approximately ten thousand more words. OK, probably not.

As much as I’d like what I came to call the Hike & Write to become an annual tradition, I know it won’t. Sonny is 9 years old and, despite his strong pull of the leash for nearly five miles, it will eventually weaken. As our son plays more sports, involves himself in other extracurriculars, I won’t be able to just leave for a weekend.

So, I’ll remember this weekend for what it was. Peaceful. Everyone who knows me knows how much I read Thoreau, especially his Journal. On Jan. 7, 1852, 172 years from the day I spent hiking through DeSoto State Park, Thoreau wrote this:

“I go forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to see what new picture will be painted there, what new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views. Can Washington Street or Broadway show anything as good? Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask curtains glow along the western window. And now the first star is lit, and I go home.”

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.