Most every day (especially in winter), The Farmer’s truck
sheds clods of sticky black dirt onto our driveway…not-so-picturesque proof
that THE PRAIRIE is out there.
It’s out there studded with hickories, cedars and mock
oranges, dotted with ponds farmed with catfish and tracked with trails of deer
and turkey. Cattle graze its grasslands, and coyotes howl come dark.
There,
even eagles fly high, and the wind seems to whistle a bit louder. Goldenrod glistens
with a Midas touch, and clover turns deep crimson.
This narrow sliver of rolling land that “…hugs central
Alabama like a dark cummerbund,” wrote
author Kathryn Tucker Windham, is the heart of Alabama’s heartland.
Commonly called the Black Belt for its
Blackland Prairie soil, it is where I was raised and where I will rest in peace
in one of the last spots left in a rural cemetery.
Meanwhile, there’s digging to be done: fencepost holes, seed
for winter grazing, stories and photos and memories.
And that driveway needs shoveling. Again!
Join me on this journey as we bring home the Black Belt.
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