I'm still working on the whole 'Southern Belle' thing...

But, it looks like I'll have some time to practice. I bought a house!

I decided I'll be sticking around here for a while. It will soon be ready to host visitors, if you find yourself in Atlanta.

Moving day is Saturday. Back to packing, packing, packing...

I heart the National Park Service.

(Or... Yes, that is actually how we Reeds spend our days off.)

"National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." -- Wallace Stegner


Some personal highlights:

• Night tour of Mammoth Cave (during a tornado)
  
• Camping in Acadia
  
• Best. Guide. Ever. at Adams
  
• Hiking in Zion, Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef
  
• Rafting in Yellowstone
  
• Sunset at the Grand Canyon
  
• Conservation at the Everglades
• Boot Mills at Lowell
  
• Iron Works at Saugus
  
• Counting roadkill in Saguaro (bet you've never done that for a ward service project)
  
• School trips to Mesa Verde and Casa Grande and Montezuma Castle
  
• Poetry at Longfellow
  
• Communing with Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Adams, Kennedy, etc.
  
• National Park passports
  
• Gettysburg roadtrip with Em
  
• Christmas pictures at Organ Pipe
  
• Minute Man with Saskia
  
• Getting lost on the Freedom Trail (a big red line painted on the ground)
  
• Potty breaks at Glen Canyon
  
• Jamestown in the sweltering heat
  
• Plymouth in the freezing rain (on Thanksgiving, of course)
  
• Memorials at night (and also the time we didn't because I was throwing up on the beltway)
  
• Et al.
  

With many more to come. When I retire, I want to be a park ranger.

(In the meantime, if anyone wants to spend 12 hours of their life watching Ken Burns' newest documentary on the National Parks when it releases in September... just let me know. He has researched the story for 10 years, spent 6 years on the photography, and it cost more than any other project Burns has done. Should be great. Nerds unite.)

Herons and Gators and Dolphins, oh my!

(Or, National Park #2)

The Reeds went South last week, to Florida. (Finally got the pictures off the camera.)

Loved it. The Everglades were particularly fascinating. Especially for the self that planned to be, alternatively, a wildlife biologist, a marine biologist, or a veterinarian for oh, about the first 17 years of my life (minus a brief foray into architecture).

My new hero.

(The first in a series of National Park tribute pieces... must mean it's Reed family vacation season)

The Reeds were in Georgia last week, and though we had to detour from our original plan, we ended up spending Memorial Day in Andersonville, GA -- home to one of the largest Civil War POW camps, now a National Historic Site and home to the National Prisoner of War Museum. 

During the Civil War, approximately 45,000 Union soldiers were held at some point at Andersonville prison.  Due to overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of food and supplies, 12,913 of those soldiers died (the largest number and proportion of deaths of American POWs ever).

The cemetery is sobering.  This is only a fraction of the nearly 13,000 graves, many buried shoulder to shoulder.  

I was struck by one story there.  

A Private in the Union Army, Dorence Atwater was caught and imprisoned as a POW at Andersonville when he was 19 years old.  While there, he was assigned to record the names and numbers of the dead. Fearing the federal government would never see the list after the war was over, he secretly wrote his own copy of the list, and when the war was over and the camp closed, snuck it out. He was eventually able to join with Clara Barton (the founder of the American Red Cross) and return with her to Andersonville to properly mark the graves of the dead.  Because of his list, fewer than 600 of the nearly 13,000 graves are marked as 'Unknown Soldier'.

Nothing he did changed the course of or conditions at Andersonville. But, at 19 years old he recognized an injustice within his small sphere of influence and did something remakable -- make sure that fallen soldiers had a name and that thousands of families knew where their sons were buried.