46.7 mi / 11.9 mph / 1671 ft. climbing
Home: Sophie and Ethan’s House

The south wind hadn’t quite cranked up to its predicted 40mph gusts, but it was unusually breezy for early morning, and the massive amount of air it had already dragged up from the Gulf bubbled the temperature above 72°F by 8am! We were sad to leave one of the best AirBNBs we’ve ever stayed in, but wanted to get through the day’s weather challenges and find refuge with Sophie and Ethan, where a friendly welcome would make their place better than here even if they lived in a dirt hovel (bonus: they don’t!)

Part of the magic of the Deer Lodge AirBNB is that it sits nearly on the Tanglefoot Trail, so we were back heading north in quiet peace almost immediately. Unfortunately something about the tree-tunnel prevented the tailwind for operating on our backsides as it should have, so the nine miles were sweatier work than I’d been expecting. Just before we got off, we saw a group of four cyclists heading the other way, the first other riders in 19 miles across two days. Which just makes me more impressed with the state/communities supporting the trail as well as they do. In this state with minimal cycling culture, “if you build it, they will come” hasn’t yet been enough to create the demand that Ray Kinsella did in Iowa, but if you don’t build it, they definitely won’t come.

At tiny Algoma we left the trail to head westward for the next ~30 miles. While we should never have to face into the strong wind, a gusty crosswind could be nearly as debilitating. Luckily the hope that StreetView had given me was confirmed in reality: MS-334 is such a minor road (paralleling US-278 that runs three miles to the north) that in most places, properties and their trees hugged right up to the road, giving little space for the wind to gallop into us from our left side. The only time we knew how strong the wind actually was blowing was when a field would open up on our left, but even then, traffic was so light that we could move into the center of the lane to keep from being blown into the ditch.

We passed through a few small settlements, and saw many more of Mississippi’s falling-down buildings. But as has been the case throughout the state, I continue to be surprised that there isn’t any feel of dread or danger emanating from them like there might be in other places. The Pontotoc newspaper that we flipped through during a gas-station cooling stop listed a lot of meth and cocaine arrests on their front page (various forms of child/sexual abuse were the other top contender), but all of the crumbling places we passed were completely abandoned, not dens of people cooking meth. Using such decaying buildings for shelter requires extreme desperation, and it’s the unpredictable danger that comes from desperate people that creates the dark miasma that I’ve felt in other places. Without the people, the inanimate buildings are simply curiosities.

After our lunch stop, the winds picked up some more, but thankfully our final push into Oxford turned us a bit more to the north. On the other hand, the temperature had risen to 88°F, perhaps the hottest temperature we’ve felt since Montana two summers ago. And we had some of our biggest hills remaining in those last miles. Somehow Rett powered through them without overheating, but we definitely made a lengthy stop at the first gas station that appeared, where in addition to cold drinks and ice cream, we got a cup of ice to cool Rett down.

The final three miles (and still more hills!) took us across Oxford, and while it doesn’t explicitly have a fence and cattle guard surrounding it, it’s culturally just as much of an island in this state as last night’s stay was physically. Home to the University of Mississippi (aka “Ole Miss”), the pristine palaces of the fraternities and sororities represented the polar opposite of the collapsing buildings of the previous 40 miles. Lafayette County has the highest home values in the entire state (two or three times more than surrounding counties), and the bookstores, brewery, and record shop indicate a culture that cements its island status.

But as nice as the more-familiar-to-us culture is, we were here to see Sophie and Ethan, who had generously offered to host us, and let us wait out the severe and soaking weather that would be stuck over the mid-South for the next several days.

Days 2-5

We first met Sophie (and soon after, Ethan) nearly four years ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico, shortly before we became nomads. She was one of Rett’s mom’s three neighbors living in the quirky Tesuque “compound”, and a shining star of warmth and light in what otherwise was a dark and painful month, when we did what little we could to palliate the terminal diagnosis of Sue’s cancer. We saw Sophie again a month later when we returned for a couple of days to finalize Sue’s affairs, and then that was it, until now.

For Rett and I, the bond formed during that intense time meant that I felt none of the slight doubt I often feel when accepting the offer to stay with briefly-met (or even long-time!) friends. But for Sophie, for whom her Southwest excursion was just a temporary oddity in her otherwise Southeast life, and for whom our four years apart constitute nearly one-sixth of her young life, this was just another case of us benefiting from her preternatural and widespread hospitality, right?

So it was unexpectedly-validating when Ethan (an amazing 27-year-old in his own right) welcomed us into their house and pointed out Sophie’s Santa Fe “shrine”, a prominent corner display of objects containing memories from her time there. It was physical proof of what she later stated, that her time in New Mexico was a very formative and consequential stage of her life too, which gave a revelatory emotional confirmation that our (and Sue’s) feelings about the magic of Tesuque were not just imagined.

On top of that, I had completely forgotten how many of Sue’s things Sophie had accepted as we rushed to clear out Sue’s apartment (much of which I felt we were pushing on the neighbors simply to avoid them ending in the dumpster), so seeing some of those things in use brought Sue back to life in a way that she hasn’t risen in years. Even more than that, hearing Sophie talk about her interactions with Sue, which occurred at a rare time and place when Sue was out of Rett’s view, was enough to nearly fully-materialize the increasingly-ghostly image of Rett’s mom in the Star Trek transporter-beam of my mind. So even if we didn’t stay a single night with Sophie and Ethan, they had already given us a tremendous gift.

But, they also made us feel welcome to stay for far more than one night! The next four days all came with a threat of severe storms, as a front planted itself just north of Oxford. In the end, Oxford was largely spared, but areas near Memphis (where we would have been heading) collected 15 inches of rain over the period, so continuing that way would have really sucked.

And then staying through the weekend meant that we could spend more time with our hosts, especially since Ethan was slammed with tax-season work. We’d earlier hit the Circle and Square Brewery, and a Mexican restaurant, but our real (and mostly-unexpected!) blowout was on Saturday, when Sophie took Rett and I for an innocent walk to “The Square”, the historic and retail heart of Oxford.

On the Square, the girls did their best to keep me from getting bored as they browsed, but at Neilson’s (apparently the oldest department store in the South!), I became mildly-interested, and not just because of the name. The men’s clothing section was filled with polo and button-down shirts where springtime pastel colors dominated, very much a look I have not seen much of lately, except worn by some of our fellow Square-walkers. As someone who hasn’t been keeping tabs on men’s fashion recently, I wasn’t sure if this was a seasonal thing (they would be nice outfits for an Easter brunch, or something I would see spectators at the Masters golf tournament wearing), or a longer-term fashion trend, or something geographically specific to Mississippi/Oxford/The South. I was curious enough that I even considered asking one of the workers, but they probably wouldn’t have given me the succinct and accurate answer that Sophie did: it’s the Southern Frat Boy Uniform, and thus, rather than an ephemeral trend, it’s an ultimately-conservative form of fashion despite its apparent-flamboyance.

When the rain finally threatened, Sophie brought us to Funky’s, for a pizza lunch, frozen daiquiris (finally, after seeing them heavily advertised since the Gulf Coast!), and people-watching the perfectly-cool Southern Mamas out on the college town visiting their sons and daughters for the weekend.

One frozen Slurpee (with an upside-down test-tube of vodka added to it) led to another, and maybe another, and then to Ethan turning up when he was finished with work, then a beer or two, then their friend Jack joining us, then another pizza as the rains fell, and why not, another daiquiri, then a dash to City Grocery, which is not a grocery, for a more-upscale drink, and then in the dark, leapfrogging between overhangs but getting wet anyway on a quest for quesadillas at South Depot Taco Shop, and finally, someone, somewhere, calling an Uber and getting our drunk asses home.

Sophie and Ethan both have their shit so together that it’s easy to forget that they’re in their 20s (or maybe more accurately, since they don’t feel too distant from us, it makes it easy to forget that we’re not in our 20s!) So it was wonderful for them to find this way to remind us that they are in their 20s, and take us on this day-drinking-into-night-drinking journey through a college town that we never could have credibly navigated on our own. We’re good at looking at college campuses, but temporarily becoming part of one is something we couldn’t have done without their help!