Growing Up Ozarks

Growing up in the Ozarks of Arkansas is more about the sense of belonging to the hills we call home than it is the actual act of aging. It’s about getting married on land that’s been in your family for 3 generations, getting bundled up and heading out in the record cold snap to feed the pigs you’re raising to sell, or being born into a family that’s raised cattle on the same soil for five generations and learning to ride horses like most babies learn to walk. It’s ties to the land than can be felt more as a heartbeat that the ground has instilled in you rather than just a place where you grew up. Relationships with certain bends in the road, the summer nights playing with neighbors, the part of the river you were baptized in as a teenager, the front porch you and your siblings waited on for dad to come home from work, the callused feet that never saw shoes in summer, or the day you made friends with a tarantula passing by and named her Arriba. Moments, adventures, and stories relating to the surrounding landscape define the everyday.

As part of my 10+ year long-term Ozark Life project, Growing Up Ozarks is a subsection that explores what it looks and feels like to be a child navigating life in this rural portion of the American South from the perspective of a mother raising her children in this place.