The morning air in Savannah tasted of parting. The sky, neither gray nor bright, hung in between seasons, like the mood I carried in my chest. My suitcase rolled softly along the concrete path, its wheels stuttering at uneven edges, just like my thoughts. I was leaving again, heading back to New York City. But this time, the goodbye felt heavier. Not logistical, not simple, but elemental. It wasn’t just a city I was leaving, it was something my soul had curled itself around, like moss clutching oak bark. At the airport, everything began to hum strangely. The machine where I was meant to check in blinked, paused, and refused to move forward. I touched the screen again. Nothing. And then, impossibly, words appeared like a whisper: “Please come back when it is the right time.”
I stood frozen, hand still hovering. The words felt less like a glitch and more like a gatekeeper. The kind you find in myths, subtly smiling and still. I approached the airline staff, voice soft and unsure. “The kiosk told me…” I realized what had happened, mid-breath, as my heart sunk in my chest. A pause. A checking of records. Then, the answer: I arrived on the wrong day. I had never done that before. I was never meticulous with travel and planning, but I was always precise with timing. Yet, something larger had moved my feet out of time and led me to the airport not to leave, but to listen.
As I stood outside, confused and raw, contemplating the whole weekend AND my life purpose, I ordered a ride. A woman pulled up, warm eyes behind the wheel. No small talk. No introductions. The city rolled by outside in slow Southern sprawl, live oaks bowing over cracked roads, ivy threading through fences, the soft hush of Spanish moss. I was lost in my own thought, almost unaware of the driver at all. Then the woman began to speak. Not in clichés. Not in empty chatter. But in clarity, as if reading from a page written in another dimension. “You’re not meant to leave,” she said. “You have something to build here. Something real. Something sacred,” were her words distilled in simple terms. In closing, she said, “You have to start. Think bigger than Savannah.”
No words were spoken by me, nothing at all. Not about the Forest City. Not about my doubts. Not about the ache in my chest that told me this was home, even as my ticket said leave. Normally, when you order a ride, that means you have arrived. How did she know I never left? I did not share that with her. To top it off, I thought I had disguised my emotions well, so I was mesmerized by this seemingly divine encounter. When we arrived at my destination, the driver did something no driver had ever done. She stepped out of the car and gave me a hug. Not a polite goodbye, but an embrace that held grief, clarity, and permission. I cried. I couldn’t express to her what she had done, but something told me I didn’t need to.
Not long after, I decided a trip to Laurel Grove Cemetery was necessary, like I was being drawn there. Magnetized. The trees there stood in stillness, as guardians of bone and story, but the silence was not emptiness, it was depth. The wind didn’t blow, it listened. I made my way to the grave of Mary Elizabeth Haskell with the intention of sitting in that stillness for a while and having a conversation with her spirit. Mary, the benefactress. The guide. The woman who saw Gibran before the world did, who nurtured the poet’s flame in silence. Mary, who had appeared in my life many times before in quiet signs, in the way only a benevolent spirit can. I knelt before the stone, my heart laid bare in silent prayer. No answers came. No voice. Just ache. Just longing. And then, something small. When I opened my eyes, it appeared: an acorn, carved into the stone.
I had been to this grave before. I had touched its lines, and read its name. I had paused in deep reflection and reverence for our long, interconnected story. But the acorn had never revealed itself until now. I remembered the sketch in my notebook. The symbol. The seed. The dream. The Forest City. It was already in seed form. But now, it was mirrored back, carved into memory, into marble, into Mary’s grave. A final message: Begin. Not because it is easy. But because it is time.
That was the moment.
The airport machine refused me.
The earth angel drove me home.
The grave confirmed the vision.
And so, I did not turn away.
But deeper in.
Toward the forest.
Toward the city.
Toward the seed that now,
would grow.
For many years, I reflected on this encounter. It was not coincidence. Not confusion. It was purpose revealing itself through symbol and stranger, and I was not at the airport on the wrong day. When the machine said, “Don’t come back until it is the right time,” this was not rejection. It was the sacred pause that protects becoming. I was not meant to leave, not because I was trapped, but because I was being held. The message was, “Not yet. Stay. Root deeper.” This was not delay.
The driver was a stranger who behaved like no other driver ever had. She gave me not just advice, but transmission. She told me what I already knew but hadn’t yet allowed myself to believe aloud. And she said, “Think bigger than Savannah,” which at first seems contradictory, but it is not. It is the natural geometry of the seed.
Then, the grave. Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who lifted the voice of the one who wrote, “Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.” And she, not by accident, left a carved acorn to speak to me through stone and symbol. The message was not simply “You’re on the right path,” but: “This is already written. Keep going.” I didn’t imagine this.
So… how does “Forest City of the South” grow beyond Savannah? “Think bigger,” she said. My understanding is Savannah is the seed point, but every city has its hidden forest, its sacred stillness, its forgotten story, its dormant mycelial soul. The task is not to make Savannah a model, but a place that helps others remember. It’s a seed people take with them when they leave. “Think bigger” than Savannah doesn’t mean leave her behind, which was my initial response. I thought, perhaps, I was meant to go other places. It means let her bloom in others. We were never meant to stay small. But staying rooted? That’s how canopy expands.
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