North Carolina: Progress and Contrast

I’ve been puzzling for days over how to write about North Carolina. What should I talk about? The history? The strip malls? The kind and lovely people? The kudzu-strangled swamplands?

It was all there, and more: North Carolina, as I experienced it, was a study in contrast.

I hopped off the train in Durham, which is right smack in the middle of North Carolina and home to Duke University. Durham’s neighbor cities, Raleigh and Chapel Hill, are each within a few miles; locals call it “the Triangle,” and commute frequently between towns.

That’s where the area’s main problem lies: commuting. These towns, built on tobacco and once connected by fields, weren’t designed for the 21st century. But as they grew in concert, more and more roads were built: now, the Triangle is almost impossible to navigate without an automobile. Vast open spaces are bordered by wide roads. No sidewalks, few central areas… just a lot of cars.

It took me about five minutes to realize that Durham was a car town—and 45 more to procure a carton of milk and a little food for the night. To find eats, I had to hike down to the strip mall; cross a massive, empty parking lot; and wander through a ridiculously huge outlet store (which, luckily, was open late and had a grocery section).

Despite the hassle, I was undeniably happy. As I left my hotel, it started raining: a warm, fragrant rain that I’d rarely experienced out West. By the time I got to that gigantic parking lot, it was transformed: a river flowed across the sealed blacktop, lit orange by the streetlights, steaming gently. Frogs croaked, and the air was heavy with the odor of flowers and grass. It was beautiful, and it was new. I was in the South!

Kirsten and CJ

I’d stopped in Durham to visit Kirsten Hausman, who (aside from being Larry’s daughter and therefore a step-cousin of some sort) is an environmental crusader in her own right. She’s a Director at Green Plus, a program of the Institute for Sustainable Development. Their mission: to set standards for sustainability in business, and help people meet them.

One of the issues the Institute for Sustainable Development cares about is the same one that confronted me: getting around the Triangle without a car.

Kirsten told me that the area is at a crossroads both literally and figuratively. People are moving around more, and populations are growing; more and more locals commute from one town to another. But the infrastructure to support all those cars hasn’t been completed.

Without careful planning, this area could become just another mass of strip malls—or, it can be guided successfully into a more sustainable future. Right now, that’s all up to the civic planners.

For now, we poor folks and carless freaks have to ride the bus.

Lucky for me, there was a bus stop next to the Target. When I got there, a woman loaded down with grocery bags was standing near the door. I asked her if she was getting on the bus.

“No,” she said, “that bus costs two dollars and I only got a dollar. I’m waiting for the next one in a half hour.”

I, carrying exact change for my own bus ticket, shrugged and climbed aboard. But the driver stopped me.

“She gettin’ on?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. I explained what she’d said.

As I sat down, the bus driver was unbuckling his seat belt; I watched through the window as he got off the bus and convinced that woman to come ride the bus for free. He even carried her bag for her.

That’s what it comes down to, in this part of the world: you might be poor, you might be carless, but you won’t be stranded. Not if someone is around to help.

I was to encounter this attitude more and more frequently as I moved through the South, but here it really shocked me. That just wouldn’t happen in my beloved San Francisco, where people are more in the habit of stepping over others than stopping to help. It gave me something to think about.

And I had plenty of time to think, riding the bus all over Creation.

Ultimately, the Triangle wasn’t for me. I had two delicious meals with Kirsten and the family, then hopped a bus to Asheville. See you there next.