Landscapes, Part I

Landscapes

Driving across the country, or at least driving from NC to CO, you experience some dramatic climate and landscape changes.  Much of eastern NC is flat with pine forests predominating, but there are lots of bogs and swamps as well as small and large farms. Northern GA has more rolling hills, still lots of pines, and the soil, of course, as everyone knows is “red Georgia clay.”

As we traveled through AL and MS, the hills got a little higher and it seemed like there were more oaks and other deciduous trees.  Cattle and horse farms became more common, replacing some of the large cotton and corn fields we had gotten used to—although those certainly didn’t disappear. A lot of our travel from NC to MS was on interstate highways—you make good time, but there is a certain sameness from state to state and exit to exit.  Then just past Jackson, we turned off the interstate onto the Natchez Trace, which we have mentioned before.

That was a delightful interlude.  Almost immediately, your horizon shrinks and you are driving through a shady, green, tree lined two-lane highway, and you can only go 50 or 55 instead of 75 or 80 mph. After 20 or thirty miles, we realized that we almost always were going downhill—it was seldom a steep pitch, but it was certainly noticeably downhill.  Fifteen or twenty miles outside of Natchez, the woods were interspersed with swamps, and we saw more and more live oaks and cypresses and other Spanish moss draped trees appeared.

If you follow the Trace to its terminus, you drive right into the city of Natchez, which is perched on a bluff, high above the Mississippi River. One reason the Union Army wanted to occupy the city was the commanding view it provides for miles up and down the river. More recently, the city has taken advantage of the bluff and created a wonderful walkway along the crest of the bluff—this is both useful and scenic.  The walkway in on top of a wall that helps prevent landslides that have occurred periodically throughout the city’s history.

Lovely Victorian homes along the Natchez Bluff walk.

The Mississippi River is a beautiful and awe inspiring view from the bluffs—but even we could see that it is much lower than it has been in the past, and there are hundreds of barges and boats tied up along the river’s edge, waiting for the time when the river level will rise again.

Vies of the Mississippi from the Natchez bluffs;
barges are tied up waiting for the river flow to  come back up

Looking downriver from the bluffs of Natchez, you can see the twin bridges that we used to drive into Louisiana. Louisiana has its own flavor—both in food and environment so that you seem to “feel” the state; there were sights that reminded us of New Orleans, especially the food and restaurants, but there was also much that reminded us of the area in Mississippi we had just left.  Small, farming towns predominate, separated by fields of cotton, corn, and sorghum with lots of horses and cattle too.  In almost every town, we also signs of the large number of Latinos who have come to live and work here.

Sunset over the bridges that link Mississippi & Louisiana