In the State of South Georgia, along the loaf and purl of the Flint River, beckoned the manor of Rio Piedra: a remembrance of Southern Yuletide and a hundred-fifty years of plantation gunning tradition.
Nowhere…is the pleasure of friendship and Christmas so well preserved as Yuletide in an old southern community. Brick House smiles a rare and all-embracing welcome…It seems to say: ‘ I know every one of you – sweethearts and wives and good old dogs and jumpers – aye – and your Daddies and Gran'daddies, too – hurry up – come on in he'ah – I miss you and I'm getting along – I'm yo' home.'” Nash Buckingham, “Bobwhite Blue, Bobwhite Gray”
From these words I have loved plantation Christmas hunts. Confederate invitations that bind up in parchment-and-bow the hallowed halls of some fine old place, the convivial warmth of the Season, and the wiregrass-and-sage expectancy of dogs and birds ‘neath grizzled live oaks and longleaf southern pine. Days of homecoming. Days of harp and hominy. Furloughs of amnesty when holly berries decorate bayberry thickets and running cedar tumbles it way onto parlor mantles, and the pearly clusters of a sweetheart's wish adorn every festive portal. December day when a “pineapple welcome” graces an eight-foot threshold, every latch string is out, and candles flicker beneath the icy rainbows in a dozen blue-glass windows.
Noel and crisp silver dawns…molten Dixie noons…but if time could stand and slimmer, could it be the afternoons. Afternoons when shadows fall long across easy hillsides, when a sleepy sum softens the sedge until the air is misty with gold. Afternoons once the dank breath of the earth begins to rise, when you can smell the onset of evening and feel the morning's frost in your bones. Afternoons gunned to dusk, to a drift of woodsmoke and the pleading of a single bird. Days honest to last light, where in the rising gloom two dogs snap-tight, birds blow up-and-gone, and all's left is a smile. Burnt powder on a building chill, somewhere in the gloaming an old dinner bell's peal. Through the trees blink the soft yellow lights of the Big House…feast and figgy pudding, a Yule log on the fire, friends and good stories, before we retire. Generations passed and atoned…hospitality, two-hundred years honed…bittersweet days too soon to be gone…
We turned off the main road a few miles out of Camilla, in the State of South Georgia, by the Flint, and then onto the sandy avenue by the plantation marquee of Rio Piedra: Brian Hays, squire of Elhew Kennels, a big Yank from upper Mass. And this unreconstructed Reb from the most lately surrendered Carolina. The day was in the short rows, given to dusk. Crepes of Spanish moss bearded the spreading oaks gee and haw, and across the way under the open pines, the savanna was shrinking to drab and spooky.
Somewhere along the darkening river bottom, a big owl muttered fair warning, and somewhere still I could believe some gentle soul was humming “Go Down Moses” and lighting an oil lamp in a hip-pocket shanty. It mattered not a white we hurried along now in a recent Dodge Interpid, eager to be there. For in our mood it could have been a thirties Chevy, or beneath the touch of our spur the fine, fancy lick of a Morgan stallion. Four dogs aheel to the flanks. The legacy and the years encouraged it. Long, so wonderfully long, has this been quail country.
“It'll smell like crushed cedar,” Brian said.
“And fat pine,” I reckoned.
“And rosemary, and rum cake.”
“And cornbread, ‘n' collard greens, and stewed bayberry leaves and peanut butter pie…”
Ahead loomed the object of our wishes, the Lodge, clapboarded and shuttered, the color of sandy loam at twilight. Two stories solidly command a small knoll, and apiece beyond, down a dimming path – through a shadowy bottom, and past a silhouetted guard of oak and cypress – in the faint glint of the river. There's a curl of white smoke from a tall stone chimney, the quaint gunmetal gleam of the tin roof that shelters a porch rambling three sides. I'm thinking to myself… maybe it'll rain one night while we're here, and I can listen from bed, and it'll march across that tin roof like troops across Georgia. And they won't by Union.
Boxwoods frame the summons of the steps. The foyer brings a greeting of heartpine floors, the warmth of richly colored rugs. You know you're home: sporting scenes – dogs and birds – venerate every wall. Mark right, and a fire flutters along in the vast maw of the sitting room firebox, flanked by the redolent, butter-soft beckon of leather settees, lazy chairs and ottomans. Left reigns the dining table, the dignity of candle and crystal. From walnut and mahogany sideboards, poinsettias beam festive salutations…and in the corner of my imagination grandly stands the tree, adorned with garlands of popcorn and cranberry, corn-husk dolls and feather angels, and a big velvet box spilling gaily down green boughs from the tip-top.
Particularly striking, in a small breakfast nook before a three-sided mirror, is a big Rhode Island Red rooster. Magnified three-fold, complimented by bright “Good-morning” carafes of juices and sumptuous platters of sweetbread, he reminds me of Pickett – Gen. George Pickett – pompous and brave.
It takes such a place, to satisfy the setting. “Rio Piedra,” loosely Spanish for “Flint River,” holds sway in the grand plantation corridor that stretches roughly the hundred miles along the Aucilla and Flint from Albany to Tallahassee. There's a lot to live up to. At least a century-and-a-half of plantation gunning ritual, and a standard of gentility bound in blood, pageantry and pride.
Rio musters well: in 2002 the “Orvis Wingshooting Lodge of the Year,” it consistently ranks tops in client satisfaction among Orvis-endorsed destinations. History argues it takes Yankee money and southern stride to build a great bird-shooting plantation. Nobody'll fight a war over that.
Consider Rio and you find Bill and Annie Atchison, long-ago Michigan implants who wanted a corporate after-life, and were drawn heart and soul to the Thomasville bird-hunting legacy. Now, they're southern proud of their piece of that heritage.
“We try to make it fifties real,” Bill vows, “like it was…nineteen-fifties or eighteen-fifties.”
“People ask if we have pheasant or chukar,” Annie adds with a smile. “They [those birds] don't live here. You can only do one thing really well – we do quail.”
But the balance of the equation, that augers a 95 percent hunter return? Dirk Flachsmeier, world-class chef, all-around good sport, a German boy folks insist is a Cajun; Miss Cathy Clayton, who heralds each meal and graces the table; and, come huntin' time, a calvary of savvy, home-bred Boys who know lickety-split ‘bout most everything concerning “buds” and dogs, plantation culture and the Sovereignty of Southern Georgia.
Supper-first-evening is Grouper Imperial, Gulf-fresh and serenaded by lumps of buttery crabmeat. Lemony asparagus spears are there to smooth the way, and the allure of the spring-mix salad of raspberries and mandarin orange, topped with a raspberry-walnut vinaigrette, begs the quickest of blessings. Pinot or Chablis would you please. A finish of key lime pie. May be as Bill likes to think, “This is the best restaurant between Atlanta and Tampa.”
I ask Brian to be sure. “This is south Georgia?” He's star-struck but nods affirmatively. No question, this Flachsmeister kid can put on the dog, but down deep the South in me is saying, “but can the Boy do southern soul?”
Breakfast arrives as gloriously as the new morning. Beyond the window, under the building sun, tendrils of mist are climbing from the frosted grass. Faintly from a distance, floats the Bethlehem wish of a covey-call. Comes the whine of a jeep. The engine dies, replaced by the whimper and dancing toe-nails of anxious dogs. More. The guides are arriving and my bird hunter's heart soars. Across the groaning table, at least, the redoubtable Colonel Hays is bowing properly out of a deep Georgia breakfast: one last scratch biscuit, a slathering of mayhaw jelly, a prodigious dollop of soppin' molasses. Unaccustomed to such privilege, I fear he may founder.
Three thousand, birds-aplenty acres out the door. You don't have to have money to be rich. Twenty-two different hunting tracts on the Rio – the Long Leaf, The Basin, The Slew – each with a personality. Several are the fabled long leaf and wiregrass venues handed down for a double century.
Guns and shells and vests and hopes, and Brian and I clamber upon the jeep – I shotgun and my northern friend the high seat. Longside is our guide. Lee McNair, and elsewhere in the world your name might be Fred, or Jimmy or Jake. Not in south Georgia. Down here it's Mister Jimmy and Mister Fred, and Mister Mike, and if you go to ast a ‘body sumpun, it'll be “Yes-sir” and No-sir.” It's a matter of respect and pride and don't go insulting nobody by politely inviting otherwise. Just be happy you're here and settle back to enjoy a run of gentility six generations strong. Safety orders are serious, but equally habitual: “Don't shoot nothin' with four legs, four tires or wearin' orange.”
With that, Ringo and Daisy hit the ground, and we've hardly uncased the guns before the little pointer bitch has gone fragrant up the path, roading a few feet into the sedge and declaring payday. Lee looks for the dog and Great Glory, yonder he stands on the hill, impounded likewise.
“We'll take hers first,” Lee supposes, “then go to him.” And if that's not an invitation to make the mare trot, Hattie hock the bug.
Daisy is pop-eyed, taut tail tip-to-tassel. Brian and I are up, right and left, while Manners takes the middle, and when the birds go out the core of the covey whips right. Inopportunely across Mr. Hays bows, and down come two rock birds in a flurry of feathers. Three face better odds, flaring left, and two make it to the woods. Not the pair of lay birds that straggle up last. Brian shoves in a shell, slaps the gun home, and claims one. I lay neat dibs to the other. First rise and live birds on the ground. Don't wait for me to write, just come.
The three of us proceed to accommodate Ringo, the bitch three mincing steps then planted-to-trust at sight, and it's a replay. Almost ditto. One it goes. When you doubt you can stand anymore, they do it again.
Dinner is a delightful dalliance, a laze of hearty, homemade beef-and-vegetable soup and rocking chair time. Boards protest gently the journey of the rockers. The sun waxes and wanes through the quiver of the trees. A fly drones by, on the balmy air. Eyelids droop. The breeze sighs softly through the pines.
The Colonel's hand is at my shoulder. “Rally up, Boys.” No, it's just Corporal Trampus Thompson. He has us for the afternoon and we're off for the Long Leaf Tract. Our hunt winds along the languid backdrop of the river and this was bloodline. Shirahland ground in gunning days of old. It is now, as it was then, open scattered pine over wiregrass and fern. Meadows of sedge. Sunlight distilled through the trees. It's properly December in Dixie: Christmas Day is a week from Thursday, and the temperature hovers about sixty.
Lady and Abby open the show. Lady is a demure little black-on-white setter. Abby, the pointer, a liver-and-chalk matron of ten. Old dogs. Gray on their chin and wisdom in their nose. What a time we have. Twenty-three birds, I believe, at last retrieve. But wait: brace for the piss and vinegar of the derby dogs, swashbuckler and swagger, Bit and Bin. Off and away, each to outdo the other, two flashes across the hill – way out under the pines – and then upon the very tumble of the headland into a purple swale. Ben slams into scent like a teenager into love. For a moment he can't stop and he runs all over himself, then finds “whoa” and lifts and swells. Bit tosses anchor in the instant, sliding stiffly to a back. My, oh my.
Duck ala orange this evening. Okay, my good German friend, but anybody can do Manhattan.
The sun will soon be a memory as we boat our way with Bill back across the blue-gray waters of the Flint next afternoon in the aftermath of the Cartwright Hunt. There's been a little dog named Sue, laid way out there under the massive spread of a live oak. A limb find “fur as you can see” for a foot hunt. She found her way there like a prima ballerina and now she's standing twelve-high, beneath the lacy symphony of the great tree, backlit by dreamy shafts of Old Sol and framed by curly tresses of draping gray moss. The walk there I envision much as Eden.
Easy on our minds, Sue and lower Georgia, soft and easy as the purl and loaf of the water our conversation, as Bill, Col. Hays, Tennesseans Mike Gaines and Jerry Mathews, and myself, pass twilight on the deck over-hanging the river. It's a favorite pleasure of the trip. Just the five of us, n' Ol Man River, examining the remains of the day.
Lee McNair soldiers our campaign again the closing evening. Back on the Long Leaf, by the river, please, my Confederate friend.
“What don't we shoot?” he crisply inquires. “Four legs, four tires, an' nothin' orange,” Brian and I crow as one.
He's satisfied, cause down goes a mahogany Brit named Davis – for who else – Jeff Davis, and a sprightly liver-saddled pointer gyp answers to Rosie. I remember vividly the last sand of the day. Once more by the glimmering wonder of the Flint, once more under the long-needled pines, one last time intimately enjoined with wiregrass and sedge under the dimming hazy wash of the falling sun. It's a scrapbook scene, the dogs painted impressionistically opposite each other, face-to-face, the skulking bevy hunkered between. We're walking briskly to them in the bittersweet throes of the trip. I'm punching in shells, hurrying to cover the left. Brian forging up and port-arms to the right. Both of us wishing time would stall, right here, just now.
“Hold on Mr. President,” my northern compadre promises the hard-standing Brit, “we're acomin'.”
Back at the Lodge, supper is waiting. We weren't especially hungry just then, but you can't eat melancholy. To martyr matters, Miss Cathy was in absentia, off to another chore. I'd miss her gently smile. Then, in the dregs, what should suddenly appear from the kitchen but Mien Flachsmeier with the most humongous silver platter of golden quail this better side of the Mississippi. With hoecakes and peas and butterbeans and collar greens and rice and gravy – and for a German boy what crossed the water, I have to admit he's made out pretty darn southern. I put Brian on “whoa,” loaded his plate for a picture, then hit the whistle. Betwixt us we ate a covey.
In the chambers of my mind, “The Harp That Once…”sang”…O' Holy Night…”
We departed the next morning, well before day. It was hard to leave and there would be a lingering sadness. In the span of a few days, the Hunting House by the Flint had become a comforting friend. I suppose the folks there intended it that way. Georgia by birth. Southern by God. Behind us in the darkness the candles in the tall windows receded, reappearing almost magically when most certainly they were gone.
Seeming to say, “Hurry back – ‘come on in he'ah – I'm yo' home.”
If You Want to Go
Christmas or any other time during a long and abundant hunting season – October to March – Rio Piedra is a true southern pleasure, and a devout steward of the Old South plantation quail-gunning legacy. Elegantly European or dog-trot southern soul, dining and ambience are exquisite. I like it when owners frequent an occasion, as well, and you'll quickly cotton to the affable and attentive presence of Bill and Annie Atchison.
