This piece appeared in the first issue of Skills/Hobbies/Interests.
At daybreak, we drive about 45 minutes northwest to Lee Falls, in the backwoods of South Carolina, in a car that I sold to Carvana three years ago. I’m in the midst of college during Coronavirus, but hiking is the perfect socially-distanced activity when studying in upstate SC at Clemson. I’ve not been there in over two years, but this place still fascinates me. Someone had an oddly still encounter in the meadow with a black bear. Another heard choral voices coming from the ridge. There are old mineshafts about.
In a 50 mile radius, you have the huge, towering Hartwell Dam which demarcates South Carolina and Georgia, as well as the now blown-up 20-foot tall Georgia Guidestones; no one knows who exactly had the stones installed, and no one knows who exactly blew them up. I’ve seen them in person multiple times with my friends, Kaitlyn and Brian.
I never felt unsafe on this hike, until I heard about the choral voices, so I’ll put that down to placebo effect. For reference, to reach it, you have to drive down a dirt road that is certainly not wide enough for two cars, and then veer right onto a makeshift parking area. On our first visit, the only clue that this might be the trailhead was an old, parked SUV with mud caked along its bottom.
I’ve been here with many people. First, with my college-made friend Gabby, who coincidentally lived a mere twenty-minute drive away from me in all the years prior. Then, my hometown friend Jordan. I took my best friend Anna here after her very first heartbreak. Returned again and set up my favorite blue and salmon-red Eno Hammock and read with Lauren. Set up the hammock again and kissed someone. In the fall, there’s a spectacular array of reds, oranges, and burnt browns. This was the hike I recommended to everyone; at the top, Lee Falls, so close that you can take a shower.
Now, I recommend New York to everyone.
Lee Falls was on my mind upon reading the prompt of Theme #1, and I’m not entirely sure why. I proffer that the hikes in upstate South Carolina and western North Carolina were my third places before I even knew what the term meant, or registered their utility in the context of New York’s shoebox apartments. I could speculate further, but that would be superfluous; after all, I’m not from Lee Falls, Clemson, or New York.
So, to circle back: where am I from? Quite a contentious question. Almost synonymous with ‘where would I like to be from?’. They say you can’t call yourself a New Yorker for at least 10 years. But, my father’s motorcycling jacket has touched the sleeves of many on the F train. I am, on a technicality, really from Ohio. Recently, people have guessed I’m from the city, California, or Connecticut, which just makes me feel well-dressed. Steve Harvey asks, “Name a place that Matthew would like to be from.”; New York, California, Connecticut, Switzerland, even downtown Charleston all make the board.
My real hometown was 30 miles inland and full of people who liked that distance. My youngest self liked the quiet, the scenery, and the lovely routine. Unfortunately, I didn’t really enjoy my later childhood. It was marked by bullying, sickness, a drawn-out fallout with religion, and loss. Beyond my own experience, Charleston the region has always had problems; it can be deeply classist and racist, the type where weddings are held on plantations and police departments are forced to pull down their Black History Month posts. It also consumed my once-quiet hometown in urban sprawl, and most of my friend’s parents have moved to one of the coastal communities or to the mountains. It’s somewhere I’ve thought I’ve outgrown; an origin, not a home, but I think it’s possible I’m just afraid of it.
I had a perhaps important nighttime walk on Sullivan’s Island (one of Charleston’s beaches) in late December, and it, along with some amazing recent successes for my friends, have provoked some sustained thought on the prospect of one day returning to Charleston. Would I return home? That’s the exact thought that runs through my mind, so, finally, I guess that answers “where are you from?”.
I draw a thread from my interactions with urban planners, who say that New York is not an “American” city; it is an utter outlier, larger and more complex than any other urban center in the United States. I want to help shape, in a quantifiable way, the next place I call ‘home’. So, despite how much I love New York, is it outlandish to imagine enacting tangible change here? I’m ultimately a creative who measures success in statistics.
I’m reading a book all about flooding, race, and planning in Charleston. In the book (Charleston), Susan Crawford collects local perspectives from the city’s scientific and societal fringe that all point to a difficult truth: if you leave where you’re from in disdain of what it’s become, don’t expect to like it any more when you return.