Where does the American South begin? As a child, traveling to the Gulf Coast on summer vacations, I determined that it was somewhere beyond the Smokies and defined its presence by the sighting of palm trees or of "cranes" (my parents' name for any large wading bird) along the lakes and wetlands. Of course, I later learned that herons, egrets and sandhill cranes inhabit much of the Continent, especially during the warmer months, and that palm trees are planted as ornamentals in many regions of our country.
Politicians and historians might focus on the Mason-Dixon Line to delineate the South but this has little relationship to our natural landscape. One might also use a specific latitude to define the northern edge of the American South but his is problematic in the Western States where climate is more closely related to elevation than to distance from the Equator. Defining the South as coinciding with the Coastal Plain is an attractive option; however, this geophysical province extends northward to the Mid-Atlantic region and up the Mississippi Valley to southeastern Missouri and southernmost Illinois. Finally, one might use meteorologic data such as the frost-free period to characterize the South but coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest, well displaced from southern latitudes, enjoy long periods of mild (if not sunny) weather.
As I learned this morning, however, those who travel south on I-65 will clearly encounter the edge of the South. Just north of Montgomery, the highway drops from the hill country of northern Alabama to the flat landscape of the Coastal Plain; in concert, the air acquired a distinctive haze, squadrons of waterfowl moved across the scene and puffy cumulous clouds drifted in from the Gulf of Mexico. Forested hills and rocky roadcuts gave way to red clay, cattle pastures, cotton fields and riparian woodlands, the latter adorned with Spanish moss, kudzu vines and an understory of saw palmetto. There was no doubt in our minds that, after traveling through the Central Lowlands and Appalachian Highlands of North America, we had entered the Deep South of the USA.
