Them Thar Hills

The beauty of the Ozarks is nigh on to cubist. It is angle and protrusion, knot and jag. The Ozarks are a broken nose that didn't set quite straight, a tombstone worn illegible, a lover's lips blessing a c-section scar. Theirs is the beauty of use and meaning and scrabbling for a life lived hard.

When the fall comes, the trees go to the bone and the woods are a wake of tottering, knee-walking drunks swaying to a hiss and rattle danse macabre under a corpsewhite sky. Everything is contrast and vacancy.

But in the spring and summer, the hills will rain their life down on you. They will pack it in your nostrils, rub it into your eyes, grind out a shotgun-wedding waltz on the legs of crickets and the bellies of cicadas until you can hear the heat. The hills will not allow you to forget that life only comes in a surge of mess and scent and howling, that sweat is sometimes a wedding ring and walking is often climbing. They welcome you, and they dare you.

I left the Ozarks 16 years ago, but my heart is still buried in their clay, stained orange and still beating, somewhere deep in a bootlegger's cave.

Welcome to the New DILFy Workshop

I'm yah host, Nahm

It's taken most of four decades, but my handyman skills are finally such that I will not shame the name of my father when he is gone from this earth.

Gone probably because of a power tool mishap. Still.

We're labeling now

I believe she's settled in.

Whooooaaaa We're Halfway There

Sixty percent of the house is still barely navigable for all the boxes, and the kitchen still has a ways to go, but it's starting to feel like a place where I can cook.

Behind that lurks home.