Thoughts on the Natchez Trace, Scalpings,

The Natchez Trace Parkway is an absolutely phenomenal cycling route. Four hundred odd miles of commercial free traffic (Screw you eighteen wheelers!)going through a national park. No gas stations, restaurants or billboards the entire way! I passed within two hundred yards of a Wal-Mart and if I hadn't gone into Kosciusko (pronounced Ka-zee-ess-koh)in search of a post office I would have never known it was there. It seems that here on the trace the southern hobby of throwing light beer cans of the Miller, Bud, Coors or Natty variety out of the window every mile or two seems to have been curtailed.
When I look at the untamed wilds to the left and the right of my path I can't help but think of the people who came before me, the Kaintucks who walked these wilds and called it a trail. Three months on foot through the snake, bug, and spider infested wilderness, with nothing more than a knife, a gun, and a canteen. Hunting for their dinner, searching out clean drinking water, not knowing where the next stream might be, or meal might come from, waiting for a native's arrow or a bandits bullet to sing out of the shadows signaling luck run out. Folks in their S.U.V's with a flip down dvd player and a bag of Doritos drive it in a day, blind to nature's beauty. I spend a week pedaling down a paved route bitching about the hills and the heat. We've become soft.