DTD — 466 words, and the Ohio hills of my childhood

By Holly Lisle

I remember the heat of Ohio summer, and the way the leaves of the oaks and maples in the hills hung heavy on the trees, dusty green and tired. The dirt back roads, the damp, cool sandstone outcrops in the steep hills, the cicadas with their buzzing racket, and me lying in the tall grass of a clearing, looking up at the bottom side of Queen Anne’s lace and red-winged blackbirds flitting overhead from sturdy weed to sturdy weed.

I chose a place I remembered, and stuck the faint remains of a 1600’s hunting camp there, left from the last days that Ohio was still a sacred hunting ground for the tribes who inhabited the area around the Ohio river. My archeologists are not having much fun there, but I did.

I walked those hills as a kid, alone often enough, or with our Springer spaniel. I saw more game sitting still when I went alone—and more of it rocketing out of underbrush when he was along.

Anyway, that’s me. How were your words?

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