How fitting that my old friend, author Charles McNair, who was on assignment for The Bitter Southerner, and I met today at Stone Mountain on the national observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday (ironically, this year it falls on the birthdays of James R. Venable, Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1963-1987, and Robert E. Lee). I’m honored that Charles spent one of his last precious days in the States with me before moving to Colombia, South America for love. Over the years I’ve run into him numerous times on this mountain, and crossed paths with him in Atlanta's literary circles. It feels only fitting that the gravel dust of the mountain's walk-up trail should be some of the last American soil clinging to his hiking boots when he lands in Bogota. I’m glad this site played a part in prompting him to share his personal story about Stone Mountain with The Bitter Southerner.
The afternoon turned into a mystical phenolphthalein fuchsia evening sky, and I heard Charles up ahead reacting to its stunning beauty and lilting something poetic:
"If I could choose a color to be, I would be that color.
Wouldn't it be great to be that color?
[pause]
Walk around like that?"
And then, along the darkening trail, the last embers of sunset inspired him to recite a Wallace Stevens poem:
Of Mere Being
"The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.
A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.
The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down."
—Wallace Stevens
