Photo is one I took in Bath Co Kentucky when I drove there for my sister Kathy’s funeral a year ago. Oh how I love her.

I have been working on a book, historical fiction, about my family. It is so difficult to go between the dates on headstones and understand what happened in those years.

I wonder also at missing people I never met. I am reminded of a quote from the movie Amistad where Cinque says…I will call into the past far back to the beginning of time and beg them to come. I will reach back and draw them into me and they must come. For at this moment I am the whole reason they have existed at all. -Cinque

That is not arrogance but in reality we are who we are because all those people stretching back into time existed when and where they did and by studying them I honor them and they teach me. When I traverse these hills and ford the creeks and stop to watch the sun set in the western sky and gaze at the light playing tricks on the water so it sparkles like finely cut jewels and when I stand so still that I can hear the breeze whisper to me, I am struck by how the land keeps the memories. It holds the laughter and the tears, the joys and the heartaches. I feel connected to this land of my birth.