Join us for the 11th annual celebration of photography of the rural South. Every year, visitors from across the United States encounter cutting edge photography, gracious hospitality, and lively conversation amid the historic landscape of the Lower Piedmont of Georgia. This year, we've sweetened the pot for the Call for Entries by presenting a selection from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Cross Creek. We hope it inspires, delights, and encourages diverse interpretations of this most fascinating region. Come and be a part!
We need above all, I think, a certain remoteness from urban confusion. . . .
Folk call the road lonely, because there is not human traffic and human stirring.
Because I have walked it so many times and seen such a tumult of life there,
it seems to me one of the most populous highways of my acquaintance.
I have walked it in ecstasy, and in joy it is beloved.
Every pine tree, every gallberry bush, every passion vine,
every joree rustling in the underbrush is vibrant.
I have walked it in trouble, and the wind in the trees beside me is easing.
I have walked it in despair,
and the red of the sunset is my own blood dissolving into the night’s darkness.
For all such things were on earth before us,
and will survive after us,
and it is given to us to join ourselves with them and be comforted.
~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek (1942)
