And just like that, we are back to Georgia: sweetgum, woodpeckers, and owls, strides in the quest to combat voter suppression, reminders of Ahmaud Arbery’s death on this little stretch of coast… still there is moss, still the palmettos, still I run freely.

History has unfolded so organically before our eyes. We spent our first three months out West discussing Native Americans. We headed east and reversed the path of the Trail of Tears. We hit St. Simons and St. Augustine and shifted towards exploration, conquest, colonization. And now here we are unavoidably confronting yet another painful era in our history: slavery. And along the way, I have do work to tell a story of it all that is not white-washed and post-rationalized. I have to search hard, beyond curriculum, beyond the museums and exhibits to elevate the voices of those not in power, of those misrepresented or not represented at all. The books, the voices, the narratives are out there. They are powerful. They are painful. They are truth. I will continue to do the work to make them central to our framework and understanding.

• We stayed: Skidaway Island State Park
• We explored: Savannah (Did the audio tour at Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters, walked around the Savannah Historic District, took a spin through the Bonaventure Cemetery), spent a day celebrating our newly five year-old at Tybee Island, and gave ourselves a tour of the tiny town of Pin Point (and sadly just gazed at the closed Heritage Museum from outside) in our quest to explore the Gullah culture.
• We ran, biked, and sloshed through: the trails around Skidaway Island State Park, namely the Sandpiper Trail Loop, Big Ferry Trail, and the Avian Loop Trail.
• We found: marsh periwinkles and fiddler crabs, owls, woodpeckers
• We ate: Grey Market in Savannah (five stars), Huc-a-poos in Tybee Island
• We read: Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)