About a hundred acres of LAND along the Mississippi River was cared for and cultivated by my family for almost 75 years. It was a rolling landscape of steep-sided, deep ravines, meandering little creeks, broad swaths of hayfields, rutted-by-tractor-tires pathways, dotted with stands of pine and oak and poplar. When I was very young we would take a wagon out to the “back forty” (yes they actually referred to it as such) and cut down our own little Christmas cedar. In the spring I would trek to some of my favorite spots and play my version of Little House on the Prairie or fancy myself an...
