Everything in the mountains is laid back. Even the dancing.
"You don't have to know anything," John Kelley said to the crowd in the basement of the old Dahlonega Baptist Church two Saturday nights ago. "You can't make any mistakes."
Advertised as "an evening of old-timey mountain dancing," the monthly gathering had the feel of a friendly town meeting, where chairs and politics are pushed aside to make room for what really matters -- the dancing.
Everybody knew everybody there. And if they didn't, they did by evening's end. Holding hands has a way of bringing strangers together.
"I have a friend who calls it an 'egalitarian full participation folk activity,'" said Scott Russell, of Atlanta, who took turns calling out the dance moves with his wife Susan Davis. "It's not like a night club where you pay your money and take your chances. People usually help put up chairs and take them down. It's much more of a community thing."
The dances -- sponsored by the Folkways Center of the Georgia Mountains, which purchased the church in June -- feature figures and forms as eclectic as America itself.
We covered a mishmash of cultures. A little Irish. A little English. They all crossed the Atlantic, headed down the Appalachian Mountains and somehow ended up in an old church basement in Northeast Georgia.
Everyone had a different name for what we were doing: Southern figure dancing, American folk dancing, Appalachian square dancing, even something called contra dancing.
But I believe Katie Kelley, John's 9-year-old daughter, characterized it best. "It's fun," the fourth grader from Norcross said succinctly.
"I like a lot of dancing," added Katie's 11-year-old friend Rebecca Van Galder. "I just like meeting new people and switching partners and doing the different dances."
Some folks, however, just come for the music, played live by the Potluck String Band. Sixty-five-year-old George Alexander, of Tucker, didn't leave his seat for a second.
"I love this music," Alexander said. "It's the dancing I never cared for. I play senior softball and I play golf. I do all sorts of things, but dancing ain't one of them."
Alexander's friend Pat Rachels, of Conyers, lamented, "I just can't get him out there." That didn't stop Rachels, however.
"This is the first time I've ever square danced," Rachels said. "It's much easier than I thought it would be. Of course, I wasn't too good that last time."
That's OK. Nobody seemed to notice. Nobody seemed to care.
"It's a dance of little organization," Russell said. "You're not coming to develop a skill. You're coming to enjoy yourself. It's a social thing. You just want to be good enough that you're comfortable."
Russell and Davis explained each dance before it happened. It never got too complicated.
"OK," Russell said at one point. "Too much practice isn't good. Let's dance. If you don't get it on the first go round, you probably will on the second or third or 37th. It's pretty repetitive."
Then the Potluck String Band started strumming, and Russell started calling:
All together now right hand star,
Back by the left hand not too far,
Face your partner do-si-do,
Face your corner do-si-do,
Swing your partner round and round,
Now find another couple and circle up four,
Go find another couple and circle up four,
Brand new couple and a brand new four.
Forgive me if I didn't get all the words exactly correct. Sometimes it was hard to hear Russell over all the laughter.
"It's a great way to meet people and have fun," Dahlonega's Suzanne Berninger, who attended with her husband and two teen-age sons, said. "Good exercise. Great music. It's a great community thing. That's what I would call it."
And it's relatively easy. Even a rangy sports writer can get the steps down.
"If you know your right hand from your left hand, you can learn to dance," said John Kelley, who played the banjo when he wasn't dancing. "It's more homemade, more old-fashioned than what your gym teacher would have done. It's very relaxed social dancing."
Relaxed is just what Tom and Mary Cissell, of Ball Ground, were looking for. Years ago, they gave Western square dancing a try. It burned them out.
"Western is a lot more intricate," Tom said. "You've got to memorize a lot of stuff."
And if you happen to forget something?
"Everybody gets mad at you," Mary said. "It's very stressful. That's why we quit."
There's no stress at the Folkways Center, that's for sure. Just good music, good people and good fun.
Oh yeah, good cookies, too.
Twelve-year-old Briana Burns turned around and said, "Whoa."
There was a new person in line for her ballet class. And that new person needed a shave.
Briana traded her shock in for a smile, though, and extended her right hand for a shake.
"My name is Briana," she said. "I'm 12."
"My name is Dan," I replied. "I'm 28."
Briana seemed bemused. I'm not sure what number she expected me to say. Her eyes opened wide, and her mouth curled downward on one side. It was the kind of look you'd give a guy who spilled brunch all over his Sunday best.
You're both entertained and empathetic.
"Well," Briana said after a short pause, "at least you're not 82."
Who can argue with that logic? She was right. I am not 82.
But I was still at least double the age of every student lined up in the hallway of the Brenau University dance department on that day, quadruple the age of most.
I wasn't the only boy, however, and that caught me by surprise. Ballet is right up there on the machismo meter with knitting and eating quiche -- that is, until you try it.
"You're going to realize how hard it is," said my Gainesville School of Ballet instructor Jolie Long, called "Miss Jolie" by kids and colleagues alike. "The beauty and the art of ballet is that it looks so simple and graceful. But the truth of it is it's hard and rigorous. It's tough. You've got to be strong."
For most of the members of my class, white tights and black leotards were the style of the day. They were a gaggle of gigglers, little girls barely as tall as the bars attached to the studio walls.
But I was flanked by Timothy Cape and Andrew Mitchell, the male minority. And they welcomed me into their exclusive club.
Fourteen-year-old Timothy admitted he used to think ballet was "the dumbest stuff in the world." Now he wants to be a professional dancer.
Andrew started ballet because his father told him that it could help him with baseball and football, that it had worked for several pros. (We all know of a certain Georgia boy named Herschel who dabbled in the dance.)
"It'll give you better balance and will give you bigger muscles," Andrew, an 11-year-old sixth grader, said.
"What do your friends at school think?" I asked, thinking I knew the answer. "Are they cool with it?"
"Yeah," Andrew said matter-of-factly. "I just like dancing." He looked at me as if I was crazy for asking.
Was I? Did the movie "Billy Elliot" erase all tutu related teasing for boys in ballet? Not completely. It seems some adolescent insecurities take time to surface.
Timothy, a high school freshman, received the stereotypical reaction from some of his peers.
"They're just like, 'It's so dumb,'" he said. "But I don't care what they think."
Timothy began taking ballet a year ago after he agreed, at his sister's urging, to perform in the Gainesville Ballet's production of "The Nutcracker." He played the part of a bear.
"You just skip around and pick up a girl once or twice," Timothy said of the role.
After that, Timothy saw ballet as "a challenge" and enrolled in classes.
"I wanted to keep it a secret at first," he said. "I was kind of ashamed because I volunteered for this. Then I was like, 'Well, I like this now.'"
Timothy also liked, I would imagine, seeing how far he had come in a year. To do that, all he had to do was watch me fake and falter my way through the basics.
Most of my classmates already knew their tendus from their soutenus, their glissees from their plies. I unfortunately did not -- even after five years of French class.
So it was a game of follow the leader, and I was going into it blind.
"You won't know what's happening," the school's founder Diane Callahan warned me beforehand. "But because you're an adult, you'll pick it up much faster."
And louder. My "old" bones needed a squirt of WD-40. It sounded as if I was walking on a floor of bubble wrap. I was the ankle-cracker, sweet.
And that was before we ever jumped over a cat.
"This gives me the most trouble," Andrew whispered to me before we did the jump portion of the class.
"What does 'pas de chat' mean?" Miss Jolie asked the class.
Most of the students responded in unison: "Jump of the cat."
But one little girl looked troubled. She misheard the translation and raised her hand.
"Yes, Rachel," Miss Jolie said. "A question?"
"Why don't we jump over the cat instead of on it?" Rachel asked.
Miss Jolie smiled. "It's jump of the cat," she said. "Not on it."
Rachel seemed relieved.
And I was too. I made it through the class with no broken bones and my masculinity intact.
What did Briana think of my performance? Well, it was a mixed review.
"You did pretty good," she said. "Not as good as everybody else. But for a first day, good."
And, hey, at least I'm not 82 years old, right?
I'll be using that one for the next 53 years.
Ranger Mitch Oliver looked tired. His eyes already showed the wear of a full day's work. And we still had a long night ahead of us.
"There are days when you might work four or five hours," said Oliver, 26, of Buford. "And there are days you'll work 16 hours. Today is going to be one of those."
Oliver's job title is a mouthful. He is the Gwinnett County conservation ranger for the law enforcement section of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division.
Most people just call him the game warden.
Like the 250 or so other rangers in Georgia, one of Oliver's primary responsibilities during the fall is known as the night hunting detail.
It's a stakeout of sorts. Following leads, rangers hide in the forest for hours, and wait -- wait for someone to shine a spotlight or shoot a gun.
"It is kind of long and boring," admitted Sgt. Rick Godfrey, of the DNR's Gainesville office, who has worked night hunting details for more than 15 years. "It can be cold. It can be wet. It's tough. And you spend a lot of time away from your family."
It can be dangerous, too. This is one time when the police can be pretty certain the people they are after are armed. Oliver and I both wore bullet-proof vests for our venture on Saturday night.
Hunting deer at night has been a problem ever since man has had shotguns and spotlights. Basically, it's considered cheating. You're taking the hunt out of hunting.
"Hunting is a sport where the animal has somewhat of an advantage," Godfrey explained. "By going and spotlighting them at night, you have taken away their natural advantage in the daytime hunt. That's just not an ethical way to hunt. It's like shooting a dove off of a power line."
Deer use the supposedly safe cover of darkness to feed and roam. Bright lights blind deer, and they become easy targets.
Some night hunters are looking for a trophy. They will shoot a buck, cut off its head and leave the body to rot.
Others moonlight in the murder business. Armed with high-tech night-vision equipment, they can take out several deer each evening and sell the carcasses for cash.
"These guys are not hunters, they are poachers," Oliver said. "And it could deplete the resource real quick. You're taking away from the sportsman that does it the legal way. It's very unethical."
It's also very illegal. In Georgia, a first-time night-hunting offense carries a minimum fine of $500, up to 12 months in prison and a two-year suspension of hunting privileges.
Even spotlighting deer, considered "blinding wildlife," is against the law.
And it is the job of the DNR rangers to see that these laws are enforced, even if it means sitting in a truck alone in the woods for hours at a time.
Occasionally, it's the job a of a journalist to join them. I think Ranger Oliver was just happy to have someone to talk to.
"We get a lot of time to think about things, that's for sure," said Oliver, his can of Copenhagen and bottle of Mountain Dew nearby for the long night. He had been out on a night hunting detail until 2 a.m. the previous day and was back on his regular rounds by 6 a.m.
Later that night, we were following a lead in Jackson County. Oliver and other rangers had been staking out this particular plot off and on for two months. Catching poachers can be a slow process.
"It's all guess work," said Godfrey, who has made several night hunting arrests over the years. "You hope you're thinking like the poachers, but you never know."
Oliver is approaching his one-year anniversary with the force. He has yet to catch a poacher.
"I don't know if I'm just unlucky or what," said Oliver. "If we're out here, we're wanting to see business. But you're not going to catch them every night. Catching one or two per deer season is pretty good."
And those one or two arrests, Oliver has been told, make all the lonely weekend nights in the woods worthwhile.
"It can be the most exciting part of the job," Oliver said. "Especially if you've got shots, the adrenaline gets to going. And then other times, the majority of the time, you might never see a vehicle."
Most of the shining and the shooting comes from inside automobiles. Poachers tend to be lazy in addition to unlawful.
At roughly 9 p.m., we positioned Oliver's truck in the trees near a field adjacent to a backwoods road. Two other ranger trucks were hidden in other areas of the acreage.
"Hang on," Oliver said as we backed into the brush. "This may get a little bumpy."
It was a mild night for December. Where we were, hay bales outnumbered homes. And the stars in the cloudless sky outnumbered all.
We cut the engine off and sat there. No radio. No reading. Just watching and waiting for the random car to pass by.
Each time one did, my heart raced. Imagination can run wild in the woods. For each automobile, I painted a scenario of skullduggery and subterfuge.
They were likely just folks heading home, but the manufactured excitement made the hours pass faster.
The poachers appeared to be elsewhere on this day. And after four hours, and very little action, the rangers decided to call it a night.
Shortly after 1 a.m., Oliver rubbed his eyes and started up his truck. He had to be back at work in six hours.
"Well, if nothing else, you can write that we're dedicated," Oliver said. "Dedicated or stupid, one."
It didn't look like a tunnel.
It looked more like a common hill, covered with rocks and leaves and moss. But Rutherford Ellis, who is known as "Ruddy" to other members of the National Railway Historical Society's Atlanta Chapter, stared at the embankment like a prisoner staring at the cell walls that keep him from the outside world.
What lies behind this particular slope of stone and soil in Rabun County's Warwoman Dell is Ruddy's personal version of Al Capone's vault. Only 72-year-old Ruddy hopes that if he is ever able to excavate this mound of earth, his search would turn up more than Geraldo Rivera's did.
Ruddy hopes that what's inside this rise would answer one of the many mysteries found along the recondite route of the ill-fated Blue Ridge Railroad -- a project begun and abandoned by the start of the Civil War.
"One of these years," predicted 77-year-old fellow railroad buff Byron Holton, "Ruddy is either going to get brave enough or foolish enough to bring his post hole diggers out here and dig down into it. Ruddy would give his left arm to get inside that tunnel."
The U.S. Forest Service likely wouldn't be too happy if Ruddy did start digging. It owns the land and has asked that Ruddy and his fellow "railroad archaeologists" not disturb it.
"We've driven rods down in there hoping to have it break through into the tunnel, but no luck," Ruddy sighed.
No one knows for sure the contents of Saddle Gap Tunnel -- one of five incomplete tunnels along the Blue Ridge's intended route from Charleston, S.C., to Knoxville, Tenn. No one knows much about several aspects of the Blue Ridge Railroad, constructed in Georgia from 1855 to 1859 with very little documentation.
Some say as many as 41 bodies of immigrant workers are buried inside the tunnel, that a cave-in trapped them there along with their tools, oxen and carts in 1858.
Ruddy and his researchers, all from the Atlanta area, think 41 is a rather high figure for a body count. They estimate it's likely closer to two or three. But they'd like to be able to find out for sure.
"We haven't given up and we're not going to give up," said Ruddy, who has twice procured the services of scientists equipped with ground-penetrating radar for a peek inside Saddle Gap Tunnel.
"The results were inconclusive," Ruddy said.
Then he laughed and added, "This is one of the big mysteries that we're having so much fun trying to solve."
"There's another part of it, too," said 74-year-old Atlanta lawyer Jim Groton, the third of my three companions last week for a tour of the Blue Ridge's 11 miles of remains in Rabun County. "We just like an excuse to get out in the woods."
There is a tunnel -- more like a long, man-made cave, I suppose -- that you can actually walk inside along the Georgia portion of the project. Dick's Creek Tunnel is one of the 28 items of interest, some subtle and some spectacular, that Ruddy, Jim and Byron mention and map out in their "Rabun County Blue Ridge Railroad Auto and Field Tour" guidebook, which they hope to have printed for public consumption soon.
"We think we know as much about the construction of it as anybody," Ruddy said. "And we're continuing to add to that. As much as we have time."
The Blue Ridge bunch has scoured old newspaper clippings, land deeds and stockholder reports. They have conducted several interviews. But most importantly -- and, perhaps, enjoyably -- they have traversed every foot of the railway's planned path through Georgia.
Several portions of that 11-mile route are on private property.
"Any interesting encounters with landowners?" I asked.
"Yes," Ruddy replied. "One guy had a gun."
"But," Jim added, "when Ruddy, with his NRHS hat, walks in bespectacled and starts talking about railways, it automatically disarms everyone."
Ruddy, in his green Chevy Blazer with National Railway Historical Society signs stuck to the two front doors, was driver for our tour. He made several sudden stops and often drifted toward the side of the road when pointing out items of interest. He is quite enthusiastic.
And I saw why.
I stared stupefied at a bridge abutment, 28 feet tall, near the banks of Warwoman Creek. The large stones were perfectly cut, perfectly placed together. One problem: the would-be bridge doesn't appear to line up with the railway grading on the other side of the creek.
"That's when they abandoned the railroad," Byron joked.
Roughly 60 percent of the railroad was complete when the city of Charleston pulled out of the project, which was put together on a piecemeal basis. The work of several subcontractors dots the rail's run. But the dots were never connected.
There's an abutment here, a culvert there, and five partial tunnels. They serve as enigmatic monuments for the 2,000 or so laborers thought to have toiled on the Blue Ridge Railroad in Georgia.
"They were building a first-class railroad," Ruddy said. "And all the work they were doing ... was all by mule carts and pickin' shovels. The stone work is unbelievable."
So are the stones themselves. We walked past large ridges of rubble -- called spoil in rail speak -- on our woodsy walk to the east portal of Dick's Creek Tunnel, which I had to duck to enter. The "tunnel" travels just 59 feet into the side of Wall Mountain.
A waterfall trickles in front of the opening. The mud inside is like quicksand.
The west portal of Dick's Creek Tunnel is more accessible. It's located on private property, but Ruddy and the rest are regulars there. The tunnel is 1,390-feet complete, although you need a boat to see most of it. It's flooded.
Disney used the tunnel's grand entrance, naturally covered with moss and decorated with long drill holes, in the filming of its 1977 film "The Million Dollar Dixie Deliverance."
Only a train from Hollywood could travel a railway that never had any rails.
"Despite many attempts, they never were able to get going again after the Civil War," said Ruddy, adding that the city of Clayton would have been a "railroad center" if the Blue Ridge line was ever completed.
Perhaps the most famous attempt, in the late 1800s, was likely no more than Albert E. Boone's bluster. Boone, the self-proclaimed "Railway Pathfinder," dubbed his plan the Black Diamond Railroad.
"As far as we know, they never did a lick of work," Ruddy said. Still, to this day, many in Rabun County refer to the Blue Ridge as the Black Diamond.
Add that to the long track of mysteries this railway has left behind.
If you would like to learn how you can explore the Blue Ridge Railroad, or if you have information to share about the railway, call Ruddy Ellis at (404) 237-6757.