Stone Mountain (it was no picnic)

Okay, it was a picnic. This time, anyway.

The higher ups at my "real" job were generous enough to host a company picnic at Stone Mountain; a nice little suburban Atlanta park surrounding the "world's largest piece of exposed granite". It's quite the regional icon (for reasons that I'll get to), but it also has personal significance for me.

When I was a kid, having just moved to Atlanta from Oregon, I was feeling terribly "homesick" for the mountains and coastline of my old Boy Scout stomping grounds. Mom and Pop saw this and did their best to help.

When the pictoral Grand Teton wallpaper in my bedroom didn't do the trick, they decided a family outing was in order.

"We're going to Stone Mountain!"

"Hooray! We're going to Stone Mountain!" I was excited. "Where's Stone Mountain?"

"About 50 miles east of here". Now I was confused. We were in Atlanta, but we used to live in Portland, where 50 miles to the east stood Mt. Hood and its glaciers, very prominent on the horizon (on the 2 days a year that it wasn't raining).

"How come ya can't see it?"

Because it's not 11,239 feet high.

Needless to say, I was a little disappointed and no less homesick.

Don't get me wrong; Stone "Mountain" has its charms (even in 1982, before they "Six Flags"-ed it by adding a faux turn-of-some-century village "experience"), but at 1624 feet above sea level, height isn't one of them. Plus - having just come from the Left Coast and still incorrectly thinking that "The War of Northern Aggression" was a thing of the past and the environment was something to be protected - I was not enthralled by the fact that some "fergit, hell!" yahoos had taken it upon themselves to vandalize the side of the "world's largest piece of exposed granite" with a bas-relief carving of 3 Confederate icons.**

Add in its notorious connection to the KKK, the flags of the confederate states, and the Scarlett O'Hara look-a-likes and this big hunk of rock just screams "Land of Cotton" to die-hard southerners. For me, it's a symbol of everything that was a shock about moving to the South.

Well, in spite of our shared history, the mountain and I have made up - the picnic was fun, the candy was sweet, the glass-blowing was interesting, and the gondola ride 825 feet to the top of the mountain was kinda fun.

But it's still really short.


Ye Olde Fashioned Candy Shoppe
Blowing Glass
Stained Glass
The Mountain

**The Confederate Memorial Carving depicts three Southern heroes of the Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. The figures measure 90 by 190 feet, surrounded by a carved surface that covers three acres, it is larger than a football field – the largest relief sculpture in the world. The carving is recessed 42 feet into the mountain. Work on the carving began in 1915 and was finally complete in 1972.