Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

“The memory of what they entered is scrawled on my bones, so that I carry the landscape inside like an ache. The story of who I am cannot be severed from the story of the flatwoods.” 

Ray describes her ancestors, the Crackers, a group of Scottish immigrants who settled in rural Georgia in the early 1800s. Ray sees herself as being deeply interconnected with the landscape that her ancestors have inhabited for over 100 years, so that the landscape is in her “bones.” 

“‘Half Wild,’ [Mama would] murmur. She had to tie bells on my shoes, silver jingle bells that gave away my whereabouts and led her to me.” 

As a child, Ray longs to explore the junkyard and wild forests that surround her house, often hiding in them from her mother. Ray uses this anecdote as evidence of her wildness, and of her deep, almost instinctual passion for nature.

“Even now in places […] you can see how south Georgia used to be, before all the old longleaf pine forests that were our sublimity and our majesty were cut. Nothing is more beautiful, nothing more mysterious, nothing more breathtaking, nothing more surreal.”

Though Georgia was once covered by the unique ecosystem of longleaf pine forests, most of these have been cut down by loggers and replaced by more generic pine plantations. Ray bemoans the loss of these lands, emphasizing how Georgia’s natural beauty has been destroyed in the name of profit.