five weeks in chattanooga
This is a post about serendipity, trees that I will not (and have not) see(n) grow, and five weeks spent in Chattanooga.
I hope you read it. Enjoy it. Let it sink in.
Last Saturday was Tennessee Tree Day. In honor of it, I signed up to plant trees with the Lookout Mountain Conservancy.
Lookout Mountain is the most prominent of the Appalachian foothills standing watch of Chattanooga from the south. Three miles of it reside in Tennessee, while another ninety snake through northern Georgia and then into Alabama. Home to the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway, Ruby Falls, and Rock City, it draws countless visitors from the seven states (and beyond) that can supposedly be seen from its southeastern cliff.
As alluded to above, Lookout is a local landmark whose prominence only grows the further we look back into American history. During the Civil War, it played a pivotal strategic role in allowing the Union to secure the railroad and cut off supplies to the Confederates, prior to Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea. Before then, the American settlers, who began expanding west of the Appalachian range in the late 18th century, as the Revolutionary War subsided, fought the Chickamauga Cherokee to eventually wrest control of the land from them here.
On Saturday, I found myself at the base of the mountain, in it’s first neighborhood, on its first road — the Old Wauhatchie Pike — ready to plant trees at the base of the mountain’s first public park turned largest natural urban bouldering site in the southeastern United States. The Conservancy is a steward to all of this land through a land trust, and it gave me a chance to contribute to the storied history of Lookout Mountain this past weekend by planting seeds, err saplings, that I may not see grow.
Truth be told, I half-expected the event to be largely symbolic, and I came mentally prepared to place a bulb in the ground, pat some dirt around it, and pose for a cheesy photo op — there was even a photographer from the local newspaper who took my picture there — but Saturday had so much more in store for me!
My first clue as to how my serendipitous day would go came when our small group of volunteers and youth interns first gathered for introductions. For anyone who doesn’t know, I went to a small, obscure liberal arts school in Wisconsin; the kind only familiar to people who go to similar midwestern blips on the map. When we made it to the senior-most intern, he shared that he had just graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois — one of my alma mater’s primary academic and athletic rivals. As he introduced himself, I glanced down at the Beloit College sweatshirt I was coincidently wearing, and looked back up to exchange knowing smirks with him.
A bundle of saplings and a shovel were placed in my hands shortly after, and I was led up the road to the plot where we would be planting that day. I had considerably underestimated the amount of labor they would make us do that afternoon, but I accepted the challenge with enthusiasm. When we arrived at the plot, there was only one other group of people in the park — a young mother with her toddler, her infant and her out-of-town friend — enjoying a relaxing, yet playful picnic. My planting party set up shop on a ridge overlooking their group and, while the interns demonstrated our planting process for me, I couldn’t help but get distracted by the picnickers.
The day before I had been scrolling through my Instagram stories, when I came across someone from a past life who had posted a picture from a coffee shop in Chattanooga. Caught off guard by it, I sent her a DM to find out what she was doing there, but received no response. So, my distraction was understandable, when I saw her — my 8th grade girlfriend — sitting there with her two children. After a few moments, I built up the courage to shout out “Bri!” and, as she tried to perceive who I was behind my hat, mask and scraggly hair, I responded “it’s Kenny!”
We hadn’t seen each other since our high school years in suburban Chicago and had gone without communication for about just as long, so we didn’t even have enough context to catch up with each other about, so no real conversation ensued. We both just took a moment to marvel at life coincidently coming full-circle on the same sunny Tennessee hillside, and then moved on with our afternoons.
I had invited someone who I recently met off of Hinge to join me Saturday as well. After we finished volunteering, we went to meet up with friends of hers at a pop-up craft market down the street in St. Elmo. Soon after we got there, we stopped at a vintage clothing stall. Moments later, she excitedly came over to me with a game for us to play. She gestured to a bin of assorted hats and said we should pick out the one that best represents us. I went to rummage through the bin and soon found two well-worn, yet familiar hats looking up at me. The iconic two-horned logo on one and timeless Stymie Black font on the other returned me to memories of my Chicago Bulls themed bedroom growing up; I bought both on the spot.
My new friend is also the kind of person to curate her playlists, and when we headed to lunch after the market, she chose to play an up-and-coming indie artist, Goth Babe. As we drove and listened, I sat there pondering like Winnie the Pooh, “where have I heard of this artist before?” It wasn’t until we got in the car after lunch that I would remember.
At lunch, I ordered the first authentic Peruvian ceviche I’d had in three years and felt instantly transported back to my time in Lima with Remote Year, and while I sat there, enjoying the bold flavors tap-dancing on my tongue, I watched a middle-aged guy vape on the sidewalk outside the restaurant while wearing a pullover with DTE logo on it — the regional utility company that first employed me in Detroit. I snagged this intrusive, yet covert picture as we continued people watching and finished lunch on the State of Confusion patio.
On the ride home, epiphany struck and I remembered Courtney proudly telling me about her younger brother’s budding music career as the artist Goth Babe, while our friendship blossomed in Johnson City two years ago. It’s people like her and her now husband, Adam, who both showed me incredible openness and generosity, when my muffler fell off my car well driving to visit them, that led me to believe this part of the country was for me.
I share all of these little serendipitous occurrences to bring up a conversation that I had with my friend, Sam, on Sunday. As someone who has called Pittsburgh home for most of her adult life, she’s come to really appreciate her community’s serendipity rate, otherwise known as the number of “it’s a small world” moments that occur on a day-to-day basis. In all of my travels and experiences, I’ve come to think of this as one of the primary determinants in the quality of life in a community.
The irony in all of this is that when I decided to move to Chattanooga a couple months ago, I only knew one or two people here (or so I thought). I figured that I would be hard-pressed to find connection to people and place here, but last Saturday proved otherwise. I guess I intuitively knew that the serendipity rate would be high here; I just didn’t realize that would come to fruition so soon.
As a final thought, I’ll share that these serendipitous moments were all seeds that I had previously sown — intentional and otherwise — in my life, and they decided to come to bear this past Saturday. I’m here for a reason. I still don’t know what it is, but right now, I’m going to continue planting seeds because Saturday reminded me of what they can grow into.
I hope you’ll plant some seeds in your community this weekend as well.
