(Josh Mitchell photos, River Mississippi News).
Mindfulness Walk: Trace’s Chickasaw Village in Tupelo
Counters stress of annual day-after-Thanksgiving Christmas rush
By Josh Mitchell
Editor
River Mississippi News
Instead of meeting a crush of holiday shoppers, nature and peace-of-mind enthusiasts crunched fall leaves as they hiked one hour through fall foliage, weaving thru a 9,000-year-old Chickasaw Indian Trail system.
It’s Green Friday on the Natchez Trace in Tupelo, Mississippi and it’s a way for people to escape the rings of cash registers and pushy shoppers in favor of the whistling sounds of birds and green moss growing on oaks. It’s not a National Park Service initiative but one the agency’s joined with support from hikers.
(Photo gallery below)
This network of trails on the Natchez Trace in Tupelo sustained the Chickasaw people by connecting them to commerce and culture with diverse tribes up and down the Mississippi River. The Chickasaws were respected as strong warriors and traders even by the Europeans, who arrived around 1720. The Chickasaws aligned with the English whereas the Choctaws were close to the French.
The U.S. Park Service ranger leading the hike encouraged walkers to take a journey into mindfulness by focusing on their different senses, including the feeling of their feet touching the ground, as they walked through the area the Chickasaws still claim as their homeland. Several habitats, including Blackland Prairie, pine forest and hardwood were experienced by the hikers.
Here’s an excerpt from Editor Josh Mitchell’s notes:
Green fir branches and ferns make the foreground for a post-Thanksgiving natural world backed up by leaves so crisply brown they appear petrified but so easily vulnerable to being crumbled. Root vines clumsily corkscrew downward and in the adjacent treeless field a single leaf flutters and helicopters to the dirt, and from whence it came is unclear. The ranger stops, looks skyward and points out the 20 circling vultures to the hungry hikers, who wonder if they’re just actors in the day-after-Turkey-Day family favorite, “The Vultures’ Black Friday Feast.” –JM, Black (or Green) Friday, Nov. 24, 2023, Natchez Trace, Chickasaw Village site, Tupelo, Mississippi.
A River Mississippi News photo gallery by Josh Mitchell, 11/24/23.
