Mvskoke Paths Along the Flint

Lyrics

The ridge remembers.
Before the name Adair.
Before the grid was dreamed.
Before the iron rail.

The air in early October, cool on the skin.
Forty-eight degrees, before the sun burns off the river mist.
Wood smoke from a small camp, a scent of hickory on the wind.
The Mvskoke called this land home.
Not in parcels, not in squares, but in passages.
A path worn by moccasins, packed hard, from the Flint's upper tributaries.
A hunting trace, following the deer to salt licks.
A trade route, north and south, following the high, dry spine of the ridge.

Before the surveyor’s chain, there was the trail.
Before the deed was filed in 1893, there was the memory in the soil.
Under the bungalow porch, under the asphalt street, the path still breathes.
It does not forget.

Benjamin Hawkins made a note in his journal, a government man writing in 1796.
He saw the Creek hunting paths crossing these red clay ridges south of the Chattahoochee.
He saw the witness trees.
Post oaks, scarred at a horseman’s shoulder height.
A living map, read without dismounting.
A direction carved in bark, not ink.
A promise to those who followed.

Before the surveyor’s chain, there was the trail.
Before the deed was filed in 1893, there was the memory in the soil.
Under the bungalow porch, under the asphalt street, the path still breathes.
It does not forget.

The record is silent on the names of the women who gathered sassafras root here.
The ledgers do not hold the songs of the hunting parties returning in the dusk.
De Soto’s men passed near in 1540, a rumor of iron and plague on the wind.
And the witness tree, the one noted on the 1821 survey... was felled.
The living map, erased for a plat line.

But the land holds the grade.
The water still finds its old way to the Flint.
The sweetgum still scents the heavy summer air.
Under Lee Street, under Lillian Avenue, the path is sleeping.
It does not forget.