Although in my life, I have travelled extensively, Indiana has (and will always be) HOME.
For Mayes...the pull of home was Southern Georgia, with its swampland, red clay, Spanish moss hanging and Kudzu growing rampant. It was Southern Manners and Upbringing. It was Sweet Tea on the Verandah.
For me is is the ponds, streams, lakes and creeks criss-crossing my State. The sandstone and glacial till of Western Indiana. Turkey Run. The ravines, hills and Maples of the Southern part. Brown County. The Sand Dunes of Northern Indiana, and the Bedrock and Limestone Quarries of the bottom half. The Falls near Madison. Clifty Falls. It is some of the log cabins still standing or the drone of the Indy 500 cars in May. "Start your engines" and "Back Home Again". It is four distinct Seasons. The Morels, Car shows and Bluebells of Spring. Shade Trees, iced tea and bringing in the hay of Summer, and The Fairs. State and County. The Orange Push-Ups and ice cream trucks roaming the neighborhood with its music tinkling. It is cornfields and soy-beans being brought in, and orchard trips, with fat orange pumpkins, fresh cider and crisp apples in the Fall. And it is hay-wagons and draft horses...a hayride lumbering under a harvest moon...and sitting in a pile of fallen autumn leaves, and their smell. Making a bonfire of the leaves. It is the very first snowfall of Winter...and wood-smoke on the crisp air. The fur on the cat fluffed up from the cold, and fresh cut pine. It's gathering pine cones for Christmas. Peppermint sticks and oranges and gingerbread. Hot cocoa and mittens. Quilts warmed in the dryer.
I have certainly been to more beautiful places. Big Sur, California, Upstate NY, and States that have a lot more to offer Michigan, South Dakota...I have been places that were almost home (New Orleans comes immediately to mind or Mackinac Island) but always not quite. In the end...Indiana is HOME.
Everywhere else just becomes "a nice place to visit".
