I rarely get homesick when I travel, so I’m always surprised when the landscape around central Arkansas tugs at me. In March of 2000, I spent a couple of weeks roaming around Scotland and not missing America much at all. At the end of the long flights home, we came into the Memphis airport and I looked down at the dirty red lakes and ponds that dotted the landscape, and something inside me leapt a little. Red clayish water = home.

This time I’ve been watching the landscape change for 2000 miles, turning from low, flat prairie to badlands to high, rolling prairie to scrubby red dirt to Ozark foothills. I drove halfway across Arkansas through twilight and dusk, and when the kudzu began its creep up the trees something leapt again. Somewhere inside me drips with humidity and creeping vines. I was drunk on the greenness, feeling dangerous, and could have kept driving all night through the damp Southern veil.