I don't think we're in the Francis Marion National Forest anymore...
In my journal I at one point wrote down the series of transitions I'm making as I follow Lawson's path, seeing the vast differences between the landscape I traverse and the one he did.
Lawson left Charleston and went from ocean to marshland to river to swamp to forest, and as far as that goes so did I: a week along the Intracoastal Waterway by canoe, a day up the Santee still by canoe, then a few days messing around in the cypress-tupelo swamps of the Francis Marion National Forest and the Wee Tee State Forest as the Santee traveled northwest towards its formation at the confluence of the Wateree and the Congaree, visiting the High Hills of Santee and the 150-foot tupelos and acres of cypress knees in the swamps of the Congaree National Park.
Then it was towns. I had cake and coffee in the tiny crossroads hamlet of Jamestown and slept in the church, visiting little Randolph's Landing, the spot at the end of the road where the government plonked Lake Marion, widely regarded one of the Army Corps of Engineers' worst mistakes in history, drowning an ecosystem and its culture and damaging not only the Santee River but the Cooper River Basin, where it ships some of its water in a wrongheaded attempt to improve Charleston Harbor.
From there I walked on to the tevolutionary town of Camden, where I was treated like a king and slept in the basement of the rebuilt Kershaw House, and from there to Lancaster, where I met not only the delightful people at USC-Lancaster but the Catawba Indians themselves, who treated me as well as they had treated Lawson three centuries ago, and then on up to Pineville, the last little stop before Charlotte.
And this time I walked into Charlotte. So I've gone ocean, marsh, river, swamp, hills, town, city, and now big city. The best surprise I had in Charlotte was the sidewalks. Throughout my walk I have complained, pretty
Lawson left Charleston and went from ocean to marshland to river to swamp to forest, and as far as that goes so did I: a week along the Intracoastal Waterway by canoe, a day up the Santee still by canoe, then a few days messing around in the cypress-tupelo swamps of the Francis Marion National Forest and the Wee Tee State Forest as the Santee traveled northwest towards its formation at the confluence of the Wateree and the Congaree, visiting the High Hills of Santee and the 150-foot tupelos and acres of cypress knees in the swamps of the Congaree National Park.
Then it was towns. I had cake and coffee in the tiny crossroads hamlet of Jamestown and slept in the church, visiting little Randolph's Landing, the spot at the end of the road where the government plonked Lake Marion, widely regarded one of the Army Corps of Engineers' worst mistakes in history, drowning an ecosystem and its culture and damaging not only the Santee River but the Cooper River Basin, where it ships some of its water in a wrongheaded attempt to improve Charleston Harbor.
From there I walked on to the tevolutionary town of Camden, where I was treated like a king and slept in the basement of the rebuilt Kershaw House, and from there to Lancaster, where I met not only the delightful people at USC-Lancaster but the Catawba Indians themselves, who treated me as well as they had treated Lawson three centuries ago, and then on up to Pineville, the last little stop before Charlotte.
And this time I walked into Charlotte. So I've gone ocean, marsh, river, swamp, hills, town, city, and now big city. The best surprise I had in Charlotte was the sidewalks. Throughout my walk I have complained, pretty
 Where the sidewalk ends. Good luck! |  The engineer who designed this highway segment came from a planet where people do not have legs, they have wheels. |
much constantly, about the lack of sidewalks and capacity for pedestrians to share the roads. Some of that comes simply from walking through very rural territory. But the approach to every city has meant running for my life, and approaching Charlotte from Pineville, where I stopped last time, was no different. Pineville is a little comfortable suburb, with streets and sidewalks and shops, and then you run out of sidewalk and you cross I-485 and you just pray that you stay lucky. And then you walk along a strip of soul-sucking highway with about 16,741 car dealerships (that's an estimate; I might have missed a couple)
But then an astonishing thing happens. You find yourself on South Boulevard and ... there's sidewalk. And I'm here to tell you, that for the ten-or-so miles it takes you to get into Charlotte, you have sidewalk the whole way, and for that I could just weep with gratitude.
That was hardly the first thing I noticed about Charlotte. First, even as I approached Pineville, I left for the time being any semblance of rural land, as I discussed here. Before the Charlotte metro area, everywhere I went was plantations and forests and pine tree farming and meadows: South Carolina is rural. Starting to near Charlotte, instead of hitting large areas of land and seeing cows and trees and granite, I saw an endless parade of subdivisions -- of Glen Laurels and Clairemonts, of Fox Trails and Bridge Hamptons, Farringtons and Almond Glens. Those are all names of subdivisions I jotted down as I walked past. We've all heard the famous joke that a subdivision is named after the geographical feature they bulldozed and the wildlife they killed to make it, but once you've got to Parkway Crossing (real place!) you have to understand that they're just building them faster than they can name them. I mean what's next: Don't Walk Acres? The Glen at Traffic Circle?
Which brings us to Charlotte! Charlotte's origin story is that Trade and Tryon, the main downtown crossroads, has been a crossroads for time out of mind. Tryon is pretty much the Trading Path, which I've been following (and Lawson followed) since about Camden, SC. Trade was another path, running between the Cherokee settlements to the west and the coast. At the crossroads was a Catawba settlement, and that made a great place to hang out and wait for whatever was next.
In fact, at that point Lawson met someone he didn't expect. Lawson, like me, knew he was coming into the city: "This day, we pass'd through a great many Towns, and Settlements," he says. "About three in the Afternoon, we reach'd the Kadapau King's House, where we met with one John Stewart, a Scot, then an inhabitant of James-River in Virginia ." Stewart was one of the Indian traders from the Chesapeake who made their way up and down the Trading Path, bringing European goods and returning with deerskins and furs. Stewart was waiting around with the Catawbas because a Seneca raiding party was in the area and he didn't care to travel alone. Lawson mentions that Stewart had heard of the approach of Lawson's group nearly three weeks before and had waited for him, giving a little sense of how effective Indians communicated without any help from the Internet. Stewart joined Lawson's gang and they agreed to journey forward together.
But not before Lawson irritated his host by refusing to enjoy the services of "two or three trading Girls" the Catawba King kept around for visitors. When Lawson politely declined -- and even one of his his most ready companions, who had recently woken up to learn he had been robbed by a trading girl he had enjoyed for the night, declined as well -- the king didn't like it. "His Majesty flew into a violet Passion, to be thus slighted, telling the Englishmen they were good for nothing." Still, they hung around a couple days, baking bread and otherwise preparing for their journey, which at this point began to turn eastward back towards the coast.
But then an astonishing thing happens. You find yourself on South Boulevard and ... there's sidewalk. And I'm here to tell you, that for the ten-or-so miles it takes you to get into Charlotte, you have sidewalk the whole way, and for that I could just weep with gratitude.
That was hardly the first thing I noticed about Charlotte. First, even as I approached Pineville, I left for the time being any semblance of rural land, as I discussed here. Before the Charlotte metro area, everywhere I went was plantations and forests and pine tree farming and meadows: South Carolina is rural. Starting to near Charlotte, instead of hitting large areas of land and seeing cows and trees and granite, I saw an endless parade of subdivisions -- of Glen Laurels and Clairemonts, of Fox Trails and Bridge Hamptons, Farringtons and Almond Glens. Those are all names of subdivisions I jotted down as I walked past. We've all heard the famous joke that a subdivision is named after the geographical feature they bulldozed and the wildlife they killed to make it, but once you've got to Parkway Crossing (real place!) you have to understand that they're just building them faster than they can name them. I mean what's next: Don't Walk Acres? The Glen at Traffic Circle?
Which brings us to Charlotte! Charlotte's origin story is that Trade and Tryon, the main downtown crossroads, has been a crossroads for time out of mind. Tryon is pretty much the Trading Path, which I've been following (and Lawson followed) since about Camden, SC. Trade was another path, running between the Cherokee settlements to the west and the coast. At the crossroads was a Catawba settlement, and that made a great place to hang out and wait for whatever was next.
In fact, at that point Lawson met someone he didn't expect. Lawson, like me, knew he was coming into the city: "This day, we pass'd through a great many Towns, and Settlements," he says. "About three in the Afternoon, we reach'd the Kadapau King's House, where we met with one John Stewart, a Scot, then an inhabitant of James-River in Virginia ." Stewart was one of the Indian traders from the Chesapeake who made their way up and down the Trading Path, bringing European goods and returning with deerskins and furs. Stewart was waiting around with the Catawbas because a Seneca raiding party was in the area and he didn't care to travel alone. Lawson mentions that Stewart had heard of the approach of Lawson's group nearly three weeks before and had waited for him, giving a little sense of how effective Indians communicated without any help from the Internet. Stewart joined Lawson's gang and they agreed to journey forward together.
But not before Lawson irritated his host by refusing to enjoy the services of "two or three trading Girls" the Catawba King kept around for visitors. When Lawson politely declined -- and even one of his his most ready companions, who had recently woken up to learn he had been robbed by a trading girl he had enjoyed for the night, declined as well -- the king didn't like it. "His Majesty flew into a violet Passion, to be thus slighted, telling the Englishmen they were good for nothing." Still, they hung around a couple days, baking bread and otherwise preparing for their journey, which at this point began to turn eastward back towards the coast.
 We ain't in rural South Carolina no more. |  A chemical company on South Boulevard. Not too much industry in Charlotte though. Banks aplenty, as we could see from the skyscrapers. |
Charlotte honors its history as a place where people meet to do business -- it's an enormous banking capital now, and it has some astonishing skyscrapers to show it, along with the explosive redevelopment that tends to go with prosperous Sun Belt cities. (Read this piece to learn the weird and cool backstory on how Charlotte emerged as a banking center.) It even has a fabulous light rail transit line, which made my life extremely easy. My good friend and leader Val Green helped me leave my car at the southernmost end of the line, so when I made my way into town all I had to do to get back to my car was jump on the trolley. I was glad he helped -- walking from the end of the Lynx line the extra mile back to Pineville would have been one car-dodging trip too many at the end of the day.
Walking into Charlotte up South Boulevard is a delight, though. You walk past about a million self-storage places, which along with the limitless car lots lead a visitor to the conclusion that people in Charlotte -- and I suppose all modern people -- have cars only so they can fill them with stuff, which they then dump off in warehouses. I passed a little chemical plant after walking through neighborhoods easily identifiable through signs on restaurants and roadside stores: hispanic, asian, African-American. Then as I closed in manufacturing plants-turned-upscale-living-and-shopping started dominating, and by the time I could get glimpses of downtown I was in neighborhoods that took serious coin to inhabit -- off the main drag, you could see one or two of the old millhouses remained, but almost everything else was a teardown.
Once I got into downtown it was like the Peterson's Guide to the Ecosystems of the Big Cities. Sports stadium? Check (three! minor league baseball, pro football, and pro basketball!). Adorable minipark? Check: One with a literary theme and, for some reason, spitting fish. Then there was Trade and Tryon, and though no Catawba King greeted me, I had been well treated by the Catawbas already (more about that soon!). As for trading girls, I appear to have missed that neighborhood.
Walking into Charlotte up South Boulevard is a delight, though. You walk past about a million self-storage places, which along with the limitless car lots lead a visitor to the conclusion that people in Charlotte -- and I suppose all modern people -- have cars only so they can fill them with stuff, which they then dump off in warehouses. I passed a little chemical plant after walking through neighborhoods easily identifiable through signs on restaurants and roadside stores: hispanic, asian, African-American. Then as I closed in manufacturing plants-turned-upscale-living-and-shopping started dominating, and by the time I could get glimpses of downtown I was in neighborhoods that took serious coin to inhabit -- off the main drag, you could see one or two of the old millhouses remained, but almost everything else was a teardown.
Once I got into downtown it was like the Peterson's Guide to the Ecosystems of the Big Cities. Sports stadium? Check (three! minor league baseball, pro football, and pro basketball!). Adorable minipark? Check: One with a literary theme and, for some reason, spitting fish. Then there was Trade and Tryon, and though no Catawba King greeted me, I had been well treated by the Catawbas already (more about that soon!). As for trading girls, I appear to have missed that neighborhood.
 We're hee-eere! |  These fish take turns spitting at each other. It's pretty neat. The rest of the park is all about books. |
I'm more worried about cars than raiding parties, though we'll see how that shakes out when I hit the trail again.
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