My father taught me a lot about the appreciation of beauty. He always was, and still is an unusually sentimental soul with a huge heart for all of God's creation.
One of my fondest childhood memories is of going "hunting" in the woods with him on Sunday afternoons. Our adventures couldn't really be considered "hunting" in the sense that we actually ever shot a gun at any living thing. In reality, those days were spent quietly creeping through the forest, listening and watching for wildlife, stopping to investigate downed trees and looking at little wildflowers that had pushed their way up through the rich black Ohio soil.
Eventually, we would find a stump or boulder where we'd sit to catch our breath. There, I'd listen intently as Dad told me stories about the Shawnee Indians who use to roam the very area where we sat. On several occasions, we went back to the spot where the house my father was born in once stood. Nothing was left of it but the cornerstones by then but that didn't stop me from opening an imaginary door and stepping inside to envision what it must have looked during my father's earliest years.
On our way home, we would stop halfway across Higby bridge with it's one lane that spanned the mighty Scioto River. We would get out of the car and stand gazing down at the muddy water surging it's way southward to the Ohio River.
Standing with both hands in his pockets Dad would inevitably proclaim. "Beck! I've been all over this world but I've never seen anyplace prettier than this."
I use to laugh every time he said it. Though spoken with great conviction, my father hadn't really been all over the world. He did, however, spend some time in Alaska during WWII. I couldn't help but wonder how the hills of southern Ohio could possibly compare to the great sights and wonders of the Alaskan landscape.
So be it. My father said it and I believed it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all.
Since those childhood days over forty years ago I too have been "all over the world" and in the process, have seen some magnificent sights. The Black Forest area of Germany at Christmas time is beyond description! The Rocky Mountains are breathtaking in the fall! My all time favorite place to visit anytime of the year, has to be the Caribbean with it's transparent blue water and white sandy beaches. Yellowstone National Park, the Pacific coast, the rain forest of Mexico ... I could go on and on.
But none of those places elicit the emotion I feel every time I journey back home. My heart literally skips a beat, and excitement begins to grow the instant I spot the Cincinnati skyline. By the time the rolling hills of southern Ohio appear on the distant horizon I am downright giddy.
The feeling is indescribable.
Objectively speaking, I must admit it's unlikely that Southern Ohio will ever be listed as one of the "natural wonders" of the world. To an outsider, the "mighty Scioto" probably looks like just another tired old muddy river. There are likewise hundreds of other areas in this world with nearly identical rolling hills, endless cornfields, and forests filled with oak, pine, elm and maple trees.
But objectivity in regard to my home place is an impossibility for that is where I keep my fondest memories. It's there that the skinny little girl with knobby knees and stringy hair still roams through the woods with her father, searching for critters that live in burrows and stopping to pick blackberries along the railroad tracks, then always ... always, pausing for one last look over the bridge railings at the river flowing through it's banks below.
The chances I'll ever live there again are slim to none, but there's also a part of me that has never left.
It took many years for me to realize and admit, it but my Dad was right. Surely there really isn't anyplace else quite so beautiful on earth.
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