It gets grey, rainy, breezy, windy. Even when it isn’t that cold, the humidity is relentless and the days raw; my knuckles ache. The unctuous red mud. That mud that is everywhere when you live in the country. That Alabama red clay is its worst self when the rains come.

All that is true and so is this: The besotting beauty, when the rain has passed and the ground fog, quietly, ever so quietly, slips in and wraps itself around my heart. I love this place.