a multiplicity of U turns...

... has occurred in the past two days, most of them in the past twelve hours. I consider myself a qualified expert at going back and starting over. Who will, without hesitation, to pull off the road/street and accost total strangers for directional information as I realize I have no idea where I am at any given time, other than not where I meant to be.

I started doing that early on Saturday afternoon, when I realized I had missed the turn off to go to the state park where the family was gathering. The official name of the event is Smith Family, but there are so many of us who are a sub-set, I generally refer to the gathering by a name that came along a generation later. From men who married into the family of four Smith daughters, back in the early 1800's, prior to the war of civil disobedience. So there are cousins all in the woods in east Georgia, where I have been for the past two days.

I've been several times in recent years, and thought I knew where I was going. Having actually made the trip alone a couple of times, with no one along as the navigator, guiding me with semi-somewhat marginally reliable GPS. But tooling along, listening to my talking book on the CD player, I completely missed the sign for the turn off, and continued to wander along, down the road, through the woods of McDuffie, Wilkes and ...........counties. Coming to a crossroads that made me know how  much I didn't know. So I stopped in a little store: hardware converted from a curb store at the very rural intersection of three roads in the dead center of Nowhere.

First U-turn: back to the state park. Where I unloaded a truck load of stuff (out of the back of my car) I was profoundly hopeful to not bring back home. Only marginally successful. I had over a dozen plants, all manner of potted stuff. Things I had been cultivating for weeks in anticipation of taking to the raffle. And a few that I had just dug up on Thursday, and unceremoniously dumped into pots to take and donate, looking pretty limp and road weary from travels. Along with a vast assortment of flotsam and jetsam I found that I thought: 'what a great thing to take and foist on the raffle crowd!' (with only marginal success.) About a third of it got loaded up again, and will likely be recycled for next year.