Day THIRTEEN | The Experience of the Palimpsest

Awakening to once again frigid weather, we hardy savanna students crawled from the warmth of our oversized sleeping bags to ready our breakfast and stand in line to use the restroom. Trying to enjoy our oatmeal and cold pop-tart meals we listened to Gary announce what we were doing for the day. We were heading off to travel back in time along the Natchez trail where we would draw where thousands have traveled before us. We packed into our mobile homes (also known as the vans) like clowns at the circus and hit the road.

We drove down the Natchez Trace. A road built in the 1930’s that was meant to be driven for enjoyment only. No commercial vehicles were allowed and Gary was forced to drive the speed limit of 55 mph so as to enjoy the view of the area instead of the blur of trees like on the highway. We stopped at an old part of the trace were the original pathway was and there we practiced our skills in color pencil sketching. Of course many of us found this style of sketching difficult, the end effect came out to be very strong and held emotional ties to the area.

From there we traveled to the ruins of an old pre-civil war home where all that stood today were tall pillars. There, standing high in the sky like lone soldiers of the grounds guarding the property below, the pillars became our inspiration and we laid their images down on our paper in thick black lines of graphite.  

  By now of course every student’s stomachs began to rumble with anticipation for their group meal that night. The promise of BBQ, pop, and ice cream danced in their heads as we again packed all of our art supplies goodies and packed into the vans like sardines with very large backpacks. But Gary still had one stop for the group to make that day for our stomachs would have to wait as we continued our path to the great Mound by the local Native Americans.

 The emerald mould is one of the largest ceremonial mounds in the country, is a flat-top earthen structure that rises about 35 feet high on around eight acres along the Natchez Trace Parkway. It’s super huge that it can hold several football games between our school and Nebraska! It was almost 4:30 when we arrived there. The sunshine was warm and gentle. Many people climbed on the top earth, and several guys were sliding down on the railing. That was really fun and hilarious. The only problem was that they probably felt the butt burning.  A bunch of people lied down on the lower sunshine area to have a short relaxing time. It must be fun if rolling down from the mound, while I just choose to sit on the grassland.

Finally, after the visit of the mound, we went the Pig out which is famous for its pulled pork homburg.   Pretty much everybody has the pulled pork. I had salads and the toast corn as the side dishes which were so small. The pork was chewy and dry. But it tasted good after putting some BBQ sauce.

 Anyway, the long was over and everyone was beat, pretty much. What will happen in the next stop, the colorful city? We will see.

Jessica and Hong