Atlanta can stay just as it is and hopefully Beaufort will do the same

In theory, I escaped a weekend in Atlanta without becoming road kill.

In reality, the place squashes a part of my psyche. All that congestion, traffic, steel and concrete leaves me feeling flat.

Everywhere I looked, people were jogging in exhaust fumes or letting their dogs sniff tiny sprouts by the curb.

"Don't you realize," I wanted to shout, "that you don't have to live like this?!"

I grew up in Atlanta, so I know it's a place with roots and soul.

Martin Luther King Jr., Coca-Cola, Bobby Jones, Georgia Tech, Henry Aaron, Margaret Mitchell, Big Bethel A.M.E. Church, Rich's and Davison's department stores and the Braves helped weave a special fabric into the "Dogwood City." Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. called us "the city too busy to hate." And newspaper writers like Celestine Sibley and Lewis Grizzard made sure we knew the characters, like Flossy Mae, the carhop at The Varsity drive-in who wore wildly decorated hats and sang the menu.

But as I get swept through the stop-and-go fast lanes of the city today, I know there's a better way to live.

Here in the Lowcountry, no horns are blaring or brakes squealing when the dog and I walk each morning on the shores of Port Royal Sound. The sky silently explodes in a different way every day. We share the awe with a few walkers, shrimp boat captains, egrets or, sometimes, eagles.

Our soul is uplifted by our surroundings, not beaten down.

We can't out-Atlanta Atlanta, so why would we try?

Why would we think for an instant about ruining Beaufort's Bellamy Curve with a bridge?

You want bridges to nowhere, go to Atlanta. Please. Atlanta has bridges piled on top of bridges. Teams of helicopter traffic reporters circling in the smog overhead refer to the biggest pile of bridges as "Spaghetti Junction."

Why would anyone here balk at tree-protection ordinances and waterfront vegetation setbacks? We should be begging for stricter preservation and meaningful enforcement.

We have something that Atlanta -- or any of the grand American cities -- cannot touch, cannot buy, cannot offer and cannot reproduce.

I look around in Atlanta and conclude that our real estate is grossly under-priced. We offer something that is not being made anymore. But it is something that the foolish can destroy.

In Beaufort County, we should not tolerate the same old subdivisions and the same old commercial centers as far as the eye can see.

Atlanta has tried that. And Atlanta makes road-kill of the soul.