Search Outdoors

In the beginning there was the earth, and from the earth came everything: the animals and the people and the living that grew from the unending work under the sun. But from that soil also grew a deep connection to the land and a love for the people that lived on it, and that bloomed into some of the world’s greatest artistic achievements.

William Faulkner hunted bears on the page and solitude on Sardis Lake; Vernon Presley used his own hands to build the house Elvis was born in; Chester Burnett, soon to be Howlin’ Wolf, sang as he plowed behind a mule in the hardest of hard scrabble existences. We loved the land in spite of what it demanded; we loved the land because of what it demanded. We loved the land because it came naturally to us.

Today, the Mississippi Hills are as verdant and nearly as unspoiled as they were when cotton blanketed the fields, and our connection to the earth is just as deep. But the plows and the hoes are gone, and nature is no longer the stern taskmaster but rather a joyful refuge.

So many things to do: Nearly half a dozen state parks, thousands of acres of crystalline lakes, national forests and wildlife refuges, and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway snaking its way through the hills bestowing marinas and white sand beaches and miles and miles of recreational bliss.  You can bike through the nation’s largest and best preserved Civil War earthworks at Corinth; canoe through the rugged Bear Creek Canyon in Tishomingo State Park; bird watch along the Natchez Trace Parkway; fish for bass at Grenada Lake, go mushroom hunting in Holly Springs National Forest.

Where once work was unending, now it is fun under the sun that never quits. And honestly, we love it that way. You will, too.