Page 87 - Tattnall County

“Something in us longs to see

a hundred thousand birds—not just imagined birds, but real ones. Such a spectacle of numbers reassures us that nature has not been completely conquered, that we have not set our foot

against all its magnifcence.”

[Janisse Ray, from Wild Card Quilt ]

Janisse grew up in neighboring Appling County, which is the setting for Ecology of a Cracker Childhood , her memoir and personal disclosure of the endangered plight of longleaf and wiregrass as well as the authentic community that once defned its people. “Ray grew up in a junkyard outside what had been longleaf pine forest, an ecosystem that has nearly disappeared in the American South through excessive logging” reads an Amazon review. The book won the American Book Award, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the Southeastern Booksellers Association Award for Nonfction, and the Southern Environmental Law Center Award.

Hometown Living At Its Best 85