Sweet (water) Dreams in Sour Times - Georgia and Florida State Parks, Vol 2

there are places so close to the clank of the city and it feels like you're hours away, and the water flows fast and loud over a cusp of limestone you forgot was there, and it fills you with its peaceful and primal energy at a time when you're stuck in the muck of a slow sad summer.
Sweet(water) dreams are made of this.





(Lindsey sits on a rock below the mill ruin)








Sweetwater Creek State Park is a large park,
so it's easy to find a place for yourself, even along the river at its rapids. Several others have already written about this place from a historical perspective, and the story of the Mill and its destruction in the Civil War, and its skeletal ruin, is central to the park's notoriety. It is understood why the mill and its industry were here in the first place - the same wild energy that empowers ____ at so many waterfalls...

... and the in-between-ness of the Brevard Fault that it crosses. The same that crosses Nickajack Creek at Ruff's Mill near Concord Rd. in Cobb County and probably Buford Dam on the Chattahoochee at Lake Lanier and Tallulah Gorge ninety miles northeast!

...not to mention a large lake just above the mill and rapids, and a forest full of wildlife, a mix of North Georgia and the Piedmont. I found some deer to be helpful guides when nearly lost on my first trip this month, while cute frogs and toads found Eelnyl, Linds, and I picnicking on the rocks this past weekend.


Both trips, I arrived melancholy, and left wired and inspired.


(and splattering my friends with Jungian slips about Rising Fawns and such, like a Pollock painting)


for more info on Sweetwater Creek State Park, Lithia Springs, GA:
http://www.gastateparks.org/net/content/go.aspx?s=80.0.0.5




-Arianna, R. F.