Things That Make You Go... Ugh.

I generally pay attention to the news. I like being in the know on what's happening in the world around me. I see the headlines and the continual news coverage of all the big stories and a lot of the smaller ones. I think OJ probably did it and he's a sick and very stupid individual. Scott Peterson's guilty too and quite a moron. None of those cases really catches my attention, though. They're passing headlines that I absorb information from but quickly dismiss and all but forget about. They draw no real emotion from me. They're distant and I'm callous.

The past week or so I've been watching and reading the story unfold of Meredith Emerson. She's a 24 year old woman who was out hiking in the North Georgia mountains who turned up missing. A few days later a man was arresting trying to wash blood out of his van. He led police to a hidden body in the woods. The results of an autopsy revealed this woman was alive for 3 day after she was first reporting missing and was found beheaded.

This whole situation makes me so angry my blood could just boil. I can't tell you exactly why. I've never been to Vogel State Park. I don't know this woman or the 61 year old man that is now being accused of murdering her. But I do love the North Georgia mountains. I try to get up there at least once a month or so to do some mountain biking. It's not hard to see how something like this could happen. Some of the places I've been biking I can travel 10-15 miles over 3 or 4 hours and never see another soul except the guys I'm biking with. It's just desolate.

I feel almost like I've somehow been violated. These are my mountains for me to enjoy and someone has gone and done such a terrible and unspeakable thing in my mountains. I have no sympathy for this guy. He seems to show no remorse. A lot of information is coming forward now that he may be related to other similar murders. Unless this guy has some seriously good explanation as to why he's seen hiking with this woman, later washing blood out of his van, and then is able to lead police to a hidden, beheaded body then this is the case where the guy should be shot and have his family billed for the bullet.

I haven't mentioned the guy's name because he doesn't deserve to have his name mentioned. He deserves nothing but to be immediately removed from our society. I know that does nothing to bring back this woman or help or hurting family. It's not even going to make me feel any better. It will make the rest of the world safer, though. And that'll make me feel better.

I think the only time I've felt such an intense emotional reaction to something so disastrous was after Hurricane Katrina. I remember watching the news coverage on TV as shot after shot of destroyed homes on the Mississippi Gulf Coast appeared. My heart was just so broken. I wanted to do so much more than what I was able to do to help. That's where I was from, those were my people hurting and I ached with them.

I don't know how else to explain it. For the last few years of my adult life I've felt a strong desire to stay in touch with "my roots." I feel like I need to remember where I came from and what's really important. I'm not sure if that's something everyone feels at some point or something that I'm going through or exactly what. In some ways it wasn't a surprise that I felt the way I did about watching my fellow Mississippians suffer after Katrina. Mississippi has always been where I was from and will always be a place I call home. It's interesting that I now feel that way about Georgia to a degree, though. Those are my mountains.