False Freedom For the Fourth

I headed west out of Farmington with Caledonia as my lunch destination. It was the Fourth of July, Independence Day, to many Americans. I biked through a few state parks, passed several campers, travel trailers, and groups of motorcyclists and found the holiday vibrations to be completely undeniable.

I was the first one to enter an eccentric little restaurant on the south end of Caledonia that was only open on the weekends. I ordered a cardinal cream soda (a cherry flavored cream soda) and a Navajo taco. A gang of elderly Harley riders entered a few minutes later and sauntered to the counter to order food. There were 3 couples, clearly rejected by the hells angels as being well, too sweet. They all seemed to think that I was a comrade simply because I rode in on a two wheeled vehicle. After sharing stories and my journey’s mission, one of them asked me if I was ,”packing heat.” When I shook my head,  another inquired, “Don’t you have pepper spray then?” Again I shook my head. The whole party looked at me as if I was nuts. They warned me that there were a lot of “crazies” out there that I needed to watch out for.

I rode on smiling, but their words seemed to clamor in my head. I quickly noticed that it was more their fear than their words. But it had me. I spent the next hour or so pretty freaked out. And biking up hills was not the best way to breathe deeply, one of my personal strategies to calm myself down. After an hour of panic, I decided to start listening to the forest and reminding myself about how beautiful the oak trees were that shaded most of my roadway. I quickly calmed down and returned to center. Thank you once again to nature.

That’s when I encountered my water savior, Conrad, a guy working for the state parks department doing hog removal.  Yep, Conrad the bore killer (sounds like a knight from the viking era) was kind enough to hand me two sodas and two water bottles as he told me about how overrun the area is with wart hogs.  Not knowing anything about hogs, I inquired about them. Are they dangerous? Conrad said that they only attack when cornered, but they carry all kinds of diseases so getting bit by one is not a fun trip to the hospital.

I passed the Huzzah Water Park campground and began getting passed by their yellow school busses which were transporting their campers to Steelville for the fireworks. I noted that 100% of these busses left their doors wide open sticking out just far enough to the right to make me, the biker in the berm only a few inches from them, feel like a pin ball ready to get thwapped by the busses’ flippers.

It was about 6:00 when I reached the Steelville City Park, an official Trail of Tears site. As I approached the park, it became evident that the local Fourth of July celebration was in full swing. The sign said, “Welcome to Freedom Fest”. I found that statement to be such a contradiction. I cringed. If that were true, then why were the Cherokee removed? Their freedom certainly was not protected by Andrew Jackson. The irony of having a freedom celebration at a Trail of Tears site was irritating me.

However, hunger is real, so I took advantage of the scene to order some supper and then set about looking for the trail of tears landmark. I found none even with the assistance of some of the locals. With modern Christian pop vocal music emanating in the background, I biked off in search of a campsite for the night.

On my short trek to a skeeter ridden campsite, I thought back to the folks in Caledonia. They were free to ride but possibly prisoners to their fear. I thought about the attendees of the Freedom Fest. They were free to gather (something that Georgia took away from the Cherokee) and watch fireworks, but I was confident that many were confined by the rigid social order commonly found in small town America. And I was free to analyze the whole thing yet falling prey to my own judgments. I guess that we all have personal feeedoms to celebrate and areas of our life where we’re dancing with our confinements.

I thought about the Cherokee of the 1830s. They certainly did not have any personal or societal freedom in their native homelands. But I don’t think that they viewed freedom the same way. I’m certain that they would have greatly appreciated keeping their land and society. But, J.T. and Michael Tlanusta Garrett make reference to the teachings of their Cherokee ancestors in which social responsibility to the family, clan, and tribe is more important than personal freedom. The values clash between personal and societal well being still plays out today. The most recent chaper, called covid19, seems to mimic this seemingly never ending dilemma. I wonder how we can all transcend this and find a way to achieve both societal and personal actualization. I suspect that the path is to first attain societal well being. That’s just my belief.