I live in Alabama now, and Alabama is covered in pine trees. They grow on low rolling hills, near marshy bogs and on sun baked plains. The loblolly pine is particularly prevalent, as it grows quickly, even in the red clay soils of the Deep South. The trees are judiciously harvested for various wood products made from lumber and wood pulp. Perhaps the strangest thing (to me) about the forests here are the fences, land plats, and enormous tree plantations you see as you travel both highways and small rural roads. You can’t get out and just go walking in the trees.
The timber here is mainly privately owned, which has its advantages. You don’t have to form a committee if you want to eradicate the pine beetle at the first hint of infestation. The timber is viewed as a resource, and the trees have a healthy life cycle that includes burning, thinning and eventual harvest. Families and companies protect their trees because they want the land to keep producing for generations to come. The down side is that the trees live in fences or behind a sign announcing the owner of said trees. The trees come with gates or barbed wire fences, and even if the fence isn’t there, you know the trees belong to someone who isn’t you.
In the Black Hills of South Dakota, the land is almost all federally owned, and as long as you were okay with getting lost or stuck, you could travel down any road that called from around the curve. I would gaze out that big front window and enjoy the scenery until I realized that we’d been driving a really long time and I remembered nothing of what was outside our windows. Just when I would start to get concerned, I would look up at my dad driving that old Chevy, and he’d say jauntily, “Well, we’ve never been down this road before!” So then I would exhale and trust that we would come out somewhere, and Dad would recognize enough to eventually get us home. And we always did.
You could hike up any embankment that caught your fancy, and for a natural born wanderer like me, every passing outcropping or stream was an invitation to get out and walk. That freedom from fences and restriction is what made traveling the Hills such a wondrous adventure. Rochford. Nemo. Deadwood. Hot Springs. Custer. Crazy Horse. Sylvan. Pactola. Sheridan. Iron Mountain. Rimrock. Hill City. These places and all the roads that took you there were the places of my childhood, my happy place, and the place I always return in my mind.
So people ask me now, “Why are you so obsessed with the Black Hills?” Or South Dakota? Or home? Or however they happen to put it, and I think to myself, “How do I explain this to them? How do I paint a word picture of the quiet and protective mountains of my youth? How do I pass along the meaning of the happiness that holds me together still even though my father has passed and I can never afford to fly home?” Shoot, I can’t even explain it to my own mother.
The Hills are emotionally imprinted on my soul. God met me in the woods and made a quiet place for an anxious little girl who had secrets and fear in her heart along with the music, the laughter, and the words. The Hills are visually stunning, and somehow God was able to communicate with me—to me: There is beauty. There is wholeness. There is peace, and I put it all here for you. That’s how I felt, anyway. I belonged. I didn’t need to give an explanation. I didn’t need to question or wonder. I just breathed and melded with my surroundings. I turned my face to the sky, and I was safe here. This was my home. Who wouldn’t long for that?