Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge

 The Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge is a symbol of hope for me, so we finally made a road trip to see it.

It’s only 50 miles southeast, but we are meandering folks, rather than efficient ones, and so we went by way of Indian Springs State Park. I wanted to see the rolling, shallow falls and the stone buildings constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression. Parks built in that era have a certain look that reminds me of my Texas grandparents, who were in their 30s in the ’30s.

The water from the springs is loaded with minerals. The Native Americans thought it was healing, and the idea hasn’t died out. The CCC built a wellhouse to let the public fill up jugs. People were in line.

The wildlife refuge is about 20 miles to the southeast. We went through Juliette, Ga., and stopped at the Whistle Stop Café. If you are a film buff, you might remember the place from Fried Green Tomatoes. The café in the movie had been an old general store. After the film was shot, the owner thought the old building really should be a café. The place serves fried green tomatoes every day it’s open. If you are a cornbread-eating country boy like me … well, I digress.

The wildlife refuge is about 55 square miles of forest, and what makes it interesting to me is that there was nothing special about it. Many of the Europeans who settled the 13 original colonies were horrible stewards of the land. They exhausted, rather than conserved, it. When their land was used up, farm families moved west, in search of arable land. The end of the line for many Southerners was Texas.

A hundred years ago, the land was typical of much of the South. The forests had been cut. The topsoil had been lost. The refuge was established in 1939. The government bought the land and asked scientists to see what they could do with it.

If you are horrified by the environmental damage we have done, seeing something like the Piedmont refuge might do you good. It’s not hopeless. We have some intriguing models for better behavior.

I’m telling you this story, hoping that you’ll look at a map and see if there’s a wildlife refuge or national forest near you.

Our trip on Thursday was a scouting mission to see what was there and how to best get into it. I’ll tell you what I learned so you might apply it to the public land near you:

• The best way to learn the Piedmont refuge is to drive its roads, looking for things that interest you. The roads in the refuge are gravel. The stream crossings have gravel bottoms. I can cross creeks safely in my truck.

• I’m interested in the plants of the Piedmont. When I see promising places, I’ll just find a wide spot in the road to park and start walking. It’s public land.

• If you’re going to walk in the woods, you need to defend against ticks and chiggers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife folks use Deep Woods Off on their skin and spray something with permethrin on their clothes the night before they go into the woods.

Many people like to hike on established trails, and if you’re one of those people, stick with it. This is different. In my younger days, I enjoyed going cross country through the forests of East Texas, especially the wilderness areas. I liked sleeping under the stars.

I learned some things along the way. One of the first lessons was that if you plan to get far from the road, you’d better carry a map and a compass.