...a month later; back from 'back east,' back to a new home...

We've been back home for a week-and-a-half now, after spending a couple of weeks visiting friends and family in GA and the Carolinas...

And this is what greeted us on our first day back in Tucson:

...one of the 'resident hawks' at our new place, perched in a mesquite tree, staring in at us through our living room window...

...and then a couple of days later--the same guy (we think) cooling his talons in the fountain across from our front door. Moving while simultaneously planning and packing for a cross-country trip--not 'fun,' exactly, but it's been fun to come home to a new place. After a week-and-a-half back, we finally feel like we 'live' in our new place--all the boxes are put away, and we even have the guest room set up...

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So...the trip back east, starting with an out-the-airplane-window-photo--an aerial view of part of The Willcox playa, with the startlingly geometrical irrigated farm-fields nearby--about two hours east of Tucson:

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...Augusta, GA:

(the right camera angle can make a ho-hum city look attractive, eh?)

It's the town where I finished elementary school and stayed through college, before moving out to Seattle...my parents had a house there, so when my father retired from the military, we ended up living here. (My father, having spent his New England childhood chopping wood and shoveling snow, swore he'd never live through severe winters again...)

Not a bad place--just not somewhere I felt 'at home;' we had no relatives there, and the 'boy, you ain't from here' vibe was something that was always just under the otherwise friendly-surface. When we moved there from southern Arizona, I missed the wide open spaces--I often thought, 'where's the sky?' So many trees, those hazy summer days, no far horizons, no mountains...no visible Milky Way at night...I knew that when I grew up, I'd head back out West...

The local press is always quick to point out that 'the metro area, center of the vibrant C.S.R.A. ("central Savannah River area"--prosaic regional moniker, no?) on the South Carolina border, is the second-largest city in Georgia.' Yes, true...but that's like comparing a salmon to a whale, the whale being Atlanta, THE city of the 'New South.'

No comparison, really.

Historic, with some beautiful architecture, but not quaintly preserved like Savannah or Charleston, Augusta is 'always on the cusp,' as a local freelance writer friend of mine said to me over lunch. Such potential...just never the collective wherewithal to progress as a great city...That being said, there are worse places. What keeps Augusta from being unbearably provincial (snob snob!) is the fact that it has a Medical university, a state university, and the nearby military base to keep just enough 'outside blood' (boy, you ain't from here, are you?) flowing into its piney woods...

It is pleasant enough, with some charming historic architecture, like the Victorian Cotton Exchange:

In its heydey, Augusta was the second-busiest inland cotton-trading port in the world, second only to Memphis, Tennessee...local farms would transport cotton (and other goods) here, from where it would go to sea and abroad via Savannah, down the river...

...and the forested residential neighborhoods are lovely; I guess living elsewhere for 12 years has given me a more appreciative eye...I used to drive by the above house every day when I was in college--not a huge place, nor particularly historic, this early 20th-century neo-Greek-revival house, but perfectly set into its landscape; I've wanted to snap a photo of it for years, and I finally did...

Over the past decade, the swampy forest just across from downtown, on the SC side, has been developed into riverfront luxury homes--private boat access, with a golf course on the other side...The New South's real estate version of paradise:

Up on "The Hill," the local state university is on the grounds of the Augusta Arsenal, which is the site of the first Confederate take-over of the Civil War. ('The south will rise again!'--The past is not dead in The South; locals only half-jokingly refer to the Civil War, not as 'the Civil War,' but as 'The War of Northern Agression'...) Not as famous as the events at Fort Sumter, in Charleston, where the first shots were fired--what happened here is that the local military officials resigned from the Union, and promptly claimed The Arsenal as Confederate property--a peaceful affair...

The Arsenal was located on 'the Hill,' relocated from the more swampy downtown area, plagued throughout the early 19th century with malaria...After the Civil War, the area became a fashionable neighborhood, 2 or 3 degrees 'cooler' than the riverside downtown neighborhoods, and not subject to the occasional river-flood...

Several miles north of the city, where the river ceases to be navigable due to rapids (the 'fall line'), is this dam that diverts water into The Augusta Canal:

It's the prettiest outdoors-area in the region...Dug in the 1840's by immigrant Irish labor, and then enlarged after the Civil War by immigrant Chinese labor, (oh yes, cosmopolitan Augusta...) the Canal was built to transform Augusta into an industrial city...for a while it was known as the 'Lowell of the South,' full of textile mills like up in Massachusetts...During the Civil War, Augusta was the only industrial center in all of the Confederacy, the sole source of gunpowder for the Southern forces...And the natural power of falling water was the source of it all...

The trail that runs between the canal and the river is a perfect spot for running and biking, and the canal itself has become popular with canoeists and kayakers...The microclimate is the northern limit of the habitat for alligators and Spanish moss...my favorite spot in Augusta...

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We spent one day in Atlanta, visiting

the Georgia Aquarium, the self-proclaimed 'world's largest aquarium'...incredibly crowded, but well worth the three-hour drive from Augusta; sort of an inland downtown SeaWorld without orcas...

(ooh, manta rays...)

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Before flying back to Arizona, we went up to the mountains around Asheville, NC--what a cool place! In all the years I lived down South, I'd never made it up here...Surprisingly 'hip,' this small mountain city--'the Paris of the South,' or 'the San Francisco of the East,' as it likes to call itself, and the pedestrian-friendly downtown, with sidewalk-cafés and bohemian atmosphere, is definitely a change from other Southern towns...

On the outskirts of the city is the celebrated Biltmore estate, the 1895 'château' of the Vanderbilt family:

The grounds were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmstead (of NY's Central Park fame)...when the Vanderbilts acquired the land, much of it had been logged; today it seems like virgin forest and meadow again, with endless views of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains...
For generations of schoolchildren in the SE, the Biltmore has been the first 'castle' that they could visit...the French Renaissance-inspired house is full of imported European furnishings--more richly furnished than many castles in Europe...it boasts medieval Flemish tapestries, and even an entire ceiling from a Venetian palazzo...But no interior photos are allowed, so here are just a few views of the gardens:

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...and so, readjusting to Tucson, after two weeks in the lush, humid SE...

A few days ago, 'our' resident hawk showed up with a friend (sibling? mate?) to perch on the fountain out front:

Back home.

...oh yeah--AND, so a few days ago, I FINALLY got THE phone-call from the Tucson school district: I DO have my teaching position back after all, even with the budget crisis. Ay. The past three months of job-uncertainty finally come to an end...and now, with a month left before the first day of the new school-year, time to get ready and catch up on the studying/preparing that I had put off, waiting to know for sure if I would be teaching...homework!