Pioneers
in the Ohio River Valley
What does it mean to be “from” somewhere? We’re from the Ohio River Valley. If you’ve lived here all your life, you might not even notice the hills you go up and down everyday, especially if you usually ride in a car rather than walk. When July turns so hot and humid, we escape to the cool shade of our big, leafy trees. And even though we can’t always see our big river, we know it’s there. The night air vibrates with summer’s bugs, but we don’t often listen on purpose. They’re just there.
This is our place. It is woven in and out of who we are. We take it with us in our hearts when we travel away from home. When we drive west through the prairies we wonder where our big trees went. When we travel north we miss our river’s hills. The farther north we go, the more we long for our night-time insect lullaby. Often it’s not until we return to our valley that we know what our home place really looks and feels like.
A Ruschmann Family photo.
Our eyes recognize the features of our valley, but it’s in our hearts where we feel the pulse of the river. Our feet root comfortably into the soil as we settle among the trees whose names we may not know, but with whom we are intimately acquainted. People are like plants, adapted to their surroundings, going about their business of growing and perhaps even flourishing.
