“All the sweetest winds..”
There are many songs that celebrate the South. “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Seven Bridges Road”, and “Carolina in My Mind” present themselves almost universally. These first two sentences are bound to get many people tapping away on their keyboards, but a list of songs is not the point here. Southerners love the South. We identify with it. It’s a way of life. I’m not sure that northerners or northeasterners ‘feel’ northern or northeastern. Some may identify with a city, like New York, for example, or a state, but Southerners ‘feel’ Southern. Of course, it’s changing, in some places - mostly the big cities. I guess the draw of sweet tea, big front porches, old hunting dogs and no snow is too strong to resist.
The south has its own feeling, doesn’t it? “All the sweetest winds, they blow across the south.” And it’s true. Verifiable. I verify it each time I take my boat out and drift among the marsh islands along the border of Virginia and North Carolina. I creep carelessly along, the boat barely moving through the black water as the marsh grasses bend gently and the moss sways in the oaks. The past whispers through the tall reeds and the wildflowers are made more brilliant against the dark, tannin stained water. The air is thick with the earthy smell of the marsh and just a hint of salt. Somehow, the only way to be is barefoot. This is my South, without a care and away from the hellfire of the modern material world.
“Softly in the distance, nothin' stirs about,” and “there is moonlight and moss in the trees.”
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