The Land Of Cotton

There's no delicate way to say this. I'm a Yankee. The worst kind of Yankee—I married a Southerner and came south in a U-Haul.

Folks around here are still fighting a civil war of sorts: school mascots (rebels) and Confederate flags are challenged; each high school has a black prom court and a white prom court; even churches of the same denomination are racially segregated. Foreigners, pronounced fariners, and loosely translated as anyone not from the south, quickly learn how things are. Change is not welcome. It reminds me of the tune, "Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton. Old times there are not forgotten...." Rarely a truer statement has been spoken.

Constancy is not so bad in other ways, however. The countryside is still awe inspiring. I live in a beautiful place with rolling hills, forest, lakes, an extinct volcano, and fields of soybeans, corn and cotton.

Here's a few pictures of the field across the road from where I live. This field is lovely in all its seasons. Right now it's cotton. Soon it will be harvested, and the land will rest. When hunting season rolls in, the field will come alive with herds of deer.

This place may be dragging its feet into the twenty-first century, but, thank God, it brings with it natural beauty. I think of these things every day when I open the front door and look upon the rolling field of cotton across the road.

Kory's sister, Shevelle.