Cliffs

 

I was curious about what had become of the farm in Ohio’s Hocking Hills where I had done some of my growing up, so I went to Google (knowing the street address — it was just a rural route number back then) and found the street view picture. Very little is left of what was there more than a half-century ago when last I saw the place. Only the same sandstone slabs by the road that underlie everything! The trees have grown up so much that the cliffs on the ridge behind are no longer visible from this roadside angle.

Those cliffs play a starring role in ‘These Remembered Hills.’ Fry Farm in that book is closely based on our ‘Hill Farm,’ including the cliffs and the vultures that nested on them through the summers. I could look out my bedroom window on the back of the old farmhouse (replaced now) and see the rising sun shining on them, the vultures launching when it grew warm enough for updrafts. If one were standing in the road there, the creek would be to ones back, with its own cliff walls. Cold water but a swim was welcome on a hot summer day.

There are quite a few such cliffs around the area. Easy to fall over — or to be pushed from, and so gave me a starting point for my mystery story.