 
The Next Audubons It's no accident that John James Audubon spent so much time traversing the Deep South, shooting and painting the blinding array of species in our most famous subtropics and wetlands. From Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin to the Florida Keys, we have the evolutionary goods. The Southern Wildlife Festival celebrates today's Audubons--painters, sculptors, decoy makers--October 18-19 in Decatur, Alabama, with artists from around the country. Get in on the ground floor. decaturcvb.org Arkansas Must Be Something in the Water Not everything that happens in Arkansas is based on bizarre forms of transportation, but the people from the Razorback State do seem bent on racing impossible vehicles in many ways. In our last issue (July/August), we touted the cardboard boats that a couple hundred very committed Arkansans built and raced and sank on Greers Ferry Lake. You'd think that might do them for a while. But no. The Hot Air Balloon Championship State Race will be held September 5-7 over--or through--the Ozarks. Competitors will follow their sport's nineteenth-century rules to the letter, with "hares" leading each heat and a pack of "hounds" chasing them. harrison-chamber.com Florida A Stroll in the Swamp Clyde Butcher, Florida's larger-than-life naturalist and world-class nature photographer, has a Labor Day idea for you: Drop down to his gallery in the Big Cypress Swamp in Ochopee and go on a Muck-About walk out behind his studio with him, his wife, Niki, or one of their guides. The walks (six per day) are given over three days of the holiday weekend, August 30 through September 1. Cost: $25. Yes, you will be waist-deep in black-black-black Big Cypress water, which, like all South Florida swamp water, is full of snakes and gators. But Big Clyde will issue you a walking stick and protect you. He and his wife have been doing this--toting a thirty-pound 8x10 large-format camera, no less--all over Big Cypress, the Everglades, and the Ten Thousand Islands for their entire professional lives. Go meet him. He'll have booths set up for photography lessons, and lighter walks for the kids. We can't think of a better way to observe Labor Day than by celebrating the great American wilderness with one of its most experienced chroniclers. clydebutcher.com Georgia Creatures of the Deep The Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary Ocean Film Festival, running September 18 through 21 at the Savannah College of Art and Design's Trustees' Theater, promises splendid access to the films and filmmakers of some thirty-plus environment- and oceanography-related documentaries. Included will be the United States premiere of Turtle Dance, an account of the cooperation between conservationists and the fishing industry to save the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle, the most seriously endangered of the turtles. graysreef.noaa.gov Kentucky She's got $2 Million Legs The Thoroughbreds are paraded around the paddock while the auctioneer rambles and the blizzard of paddles are raised. One point five; two; two point three! Gone to the Abu Dhabi syndicate for $2.5 million, the dark bay colt out of Kingmambo! The Keeneland September Yearling Sale takes place this year from September 8 through 21 at the famed track. There are no deals; this is about the boys with the deep pockets, as befits any yearling sale that has produced Kentucky Derby and Preakness winners War Emblem and Spectacular Bid. Bluegrass country--specifically the big breeding farms--will be hosting a few dozen parties during the two weeks. If you can't get there, pour yourself a mint julep, and log onto keeneland.com to follow the sales online. Louisiana Crawley, Louisiana's Annual Rice Festival Though the festival is America's undisputed oldest agricultural festival, its inaugural year is disputed between 1927 and 1937 among Louisianans and rice enthusiasts, alike. The first Rice King and Queen were crowned in 1927 in celebration after a particularly ample harvest. But not until 1937 did a more organized event take place in downtown Crowley, with even a mass wedding kicking off the festivities - just think how much rice was likely thrown at that ceremony! Though only two couples showed on the day, the enthusiasm of the crowd was not diminished and seventy-one years later the festival continues (minus nuptials). This year (October 16th-18th) events at Louisiana's Annual Rice Festival will include a Creole cook-off, jumping frog derby, and crowning of the King and Queen to the backdrop of world-class zydeco bands. Maryland Let's Get Hammered The Vintagers, Order of Edwardian Gunners, a club of antique side-by-side aficionados, are gun nuts we like. They are unabashed in their love of fine old shotguns, and they require a certain etiquette while handling them--modern world be damned. If you are shooting a 1908 Purdey 12-bore, you will show up in proper plus fours. Ray Poudrier, president of the Vintagers, signs off his e-mails with this sporting valediction: Hammers back. In other words, this is a group of people whose guns have external hammers, an extremely lovely and, for the run-of-the-mill shooter, inconvenient thing. The Vintagers' notion is in fact one of historical import: the idea that leisure--in the old sense of "great fun"--also involved labor and a modicum of challenge. Every September, Poudrier and the Vintagers practice that kind of great fun at their Vintage Cup World Side-by-Side and Double Rifle Championships. The twelfth annual event will take place in Queenstown, Maryland, September 25-28, at the Pintail Point shooting grounds, the world-class clays course that is part of the River Plantation resort on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The Vintage Cup is an open, so if you believe you can hold your own with some of the East Coast's best wing shooters and double-rifle marksmen, by all means have at it. Like each of the Vintagers who will be at the shoot, you must appear in Edwardian shooting-party dress. Hammers back, everybody. vintagers.org Mississippi Here We Go for Real Just when we thought we'd made it through the overspun madness of the conventions and could settle down to some fine SEC football and a stiff drink, it turns out that we actually have to hold the presidential election this fall. How'd that happen? The Commission on Presidential Debates, the federally funded nonpartisan organization responsible for the architecture of the debates since 1988, selects four university towns around the country as venues for the presidential and vice presidential slugfests. Oxford, Mississippi, leads the pack this season, with the first debate beginning at 9:00 p.m. eastern time on September 26 in the Ford Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Mississippi. Be there for this historic encounter, or for any of the events around it. There could not be a better or more fitting forum than Ole Miss for the first debate of this race, in which a long-standing ethnic and political barrier is broken by the participation of the country's first-ever African American nominee for the presidency of the United States. The university bears scars from its years in opposition to civil rights--most tangibly, a shell hole from a bullet fired over the crowd into the chancellor's administration building in October 1962 by National Guard troops. President John F. Kennedy was forced to call in the National Guard, and by the time the riots were quelled, two people were dead and scores injured. Although that history will certainly be referenced by the candidates, not to mention by the three-thousand-plus members of the press expected to cover them, the entire month leading up to the debate is peppered with films, lectures, and concerts at the university and in the town. In whatever form you do it, then--for whichever candidate--celebrate this singularly redemptive moment in American political history with the locals, the trustees of the University, the three thousand attending journalists, and the nation's political parties as it happens in Oxford. olemiss.edu/debate/calendar.com North Carolina Pedal Pushers The Tenth Annual Cycle North Carolina "Mountains to the Coast" fall ride will be run in its traditional easterly direction September 28 through October 4. Registration is September 27 and open to all comers. This year, the route leads the peloton from the hamlet of Black Mountain to the hamlet of Oak Island. It's a grueling 350-mile ride (give or take) that draws about a thousand riders annually. Where do you stay? Like the Tour de France, in the villages. And don't worry, a sag wagon will haul your luggage, and pros will tune your bike. So, strap on the heart-rate monitor, throw some ibuprofen tabs into the rucksack, and get your butt out there. ncsports.org South Carolina Ghosts of War The CSS H. L. Huntley, one of the first submarines in any navy anywhere, has titillated the imagination of Civil War buffs and naval history enthusiasts since it sank in the aftermath of its first and only mission off Charleston in February 1864. It successfully sank the massive USS Housatonic that night and promptly disappeared. Discovered by divers near Sullivan's Island in 1995, the Hunley continues to yield some of her secrets. Look for H. L. Hunley: The Secret Hope of the Confederacy (Hill and Wang) in September. Civil War historian Tom Chaffin provides a definitive reading of the submarine's forensic evidence. us.macmillan.com Tennessee Talkin' 'Bout My G-G-G-G-Generation It's good for everybody when hippies gather in one place. For one thing, it makes them a lot easier to avoid. On the other hand, when there are enough hippies camped out in one place for a weekend, there's usually splendid music happening. As there will be when the Austin record label Palo Duro Presents produces the Chattahippie Festival this September 18-21, with some thirty rockin' folk/roots/country/Americana acts, including Pure Prairie League and Band of Heathens. Country music legend Charlie Louvin, of Henager, Alabama, will headline. Yep. One of the greatest singers in country music for the last half century is playing Chattahippie. The razor-sharp harmonies of his shape-note singing are a piece of heaven somehow left on earth. chattahippie.com Texas Here's the Beef Texans may use beef for their barbecue, but they know a thing or two about tossing meat on the grill. The best of the lot gather in Meridian every fall for the ne plus ultra of beef contests--namely, Meridian's own National Championship Barbecue Cookoff. The twenty-first such event takes place on October 25. It's an invitation-only event for pros who are competing for some $17,000 in prizes. With all due respect to the Texans out there, drop by Meridian and pig out. bbq.htcomp.net Virginia Road Trip! Is it an accident that the author of the Declaration of Independence, former president, ambassador to France, and oenophile Thomas Jefferson settled in the oldest wine region in the United States, where the first vines were planted by our more-than-accidentally drunken forefathers in 1608? We think not. Two hundred and seven years after the beginning of the Jefferson presidency, wine weekends in Virginia are now a rite of fall. Pretty much everything in Virginia's wine country is great, specifically in Orange County, which encompasses President Madison's Montpelier and bumps up against Jefferson's Monticello, and President Monroe's Ash Lawn. Enough founding fathers' plantations for you? Okay, pack the Suburban with a half dozen drinking buddies, then nose it over to the Pick of the Piedmont Fall Wine Festival, October 25-26 in Orange, Virginia, in which a dozen local wineries are featuring their best wines. Just be sure to designate the driver. orangevachamber.com Washington, D.C. Big Animals, Airborne The Fiftieth Annual Washington International Horse Show, whose trustees are nothing if not rigorous and tradition-minded, kicks off October 21 at Washington's Verizon Center. All categories and levels of jumpers, hunters, and dressage riders will compete. Last year the President's Cup Grand Prix, awarded to the greatest jumper in the show, was renamed in honor of former president and horse enthusiast Gerald Ford. The final, vertiginously high fences will be cleared--or not--by the finalists on Saturday, October 13. Get that blazer out of the closet and get out there and clap for some 1,200-pound athletes and their riders as they sail away. wihs.org West Virginia If It Don't Move, Eat It Marlinton, West Virginia, is a very special place, and not simply because it is a Blue Ridge Mountain garden spot and farming village. It's for two reasons, really. Being as mountainous and nobly wooded as it is, thus having beaucoup critters in the woods, the state of West Virginia legalized the eating of roadkill some ten years ago. The second reason Marlinton is a special place is that immediately after the legislature legalized the eating of roadkill, the citizenry thought it would be a good idea to institute an annual Road Kill Cook-Off. And that ferocious competition, attended by dozens of cooking teams from across the South, has now been folded into the city's Annual Autumn Harvest Festival, this year in its twenty-second year, on September 27. The judges' grading curve--in other words, the form the judges fill out in assessing each dish--gives us the full flavor of the contest, so to speak. The judges state that the animals need not have been killed by vehicles, although they can be. More important, there are points awarded for "originality," meaning, say, that a king snake jambalaya is--purely on the level of boning required--an ambitious undertaking and, regardless of how the dish tastes, is to be rewarded for the almost French level of labor involved. At any rate, there will be music, food, and much hilarity for all ages. pccocww.com St. Lucia The Bite Is On To survive the beating that 500-pound blue marlin can put you through takes guts, teammates, an extremely seaworthy boat, a ton of money, and then some more guts and probably some more after that. This is exactly the sort of experience that teams of blue-water anglers pursue, from Angola to Australia to Costa Rica, at the various regional tournaments leading up to the International Game Fish Association's annual World Championships. For American and Caribbean anglers, one of the most tempting of these regional tourneys is the St. Lucia Billfishing Tournament, run this year out of the Marina at Marigot Bay. The September 11 start will mark the tourney's eighteenth year. Some forty boats and about one hundred anglers will compete for cash and prizes, including an SUV. The winner qualifies automatically for the IGFA's World Championship. St. Lucia's fishing grounds are so productive because they are so deep. Which is why this tournament produced a 707-pound blue marlin twelve years ago, a record that still stands. That big girl is long gone, of course. But she keeps everybody coming back. stluciabillfish.com |
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