The Mysterious South

Maybe it's because I'm from Utah, otherwise known as the one spot in the United States that can't really be categorized as West Coast, Southwest, Midwest, Mideast, East Coast, South, or Annexer (like Alaska or Hawaii). But there's absolutely something puzzling about the South--is it in the water?

Not only does the South have the Appalachian trail...

Amazing bayous...

Gorgeous plantations with the heart of painful history growing in their tobacco fields...

Dangerous swamps filled with terrifying creatures that crawl, slither, and snap...

Stunning churches with corrupt preachers presiding congregations who pitch in and buy him a Cadillac...

Riverboat tours...

Winding dirt roads that lead nowhere,

But the South also has produced some of the greatest creative minds ever to walk American soil, like William Faulkner

and Scott Joplin, king of ragtime.

The southern US makes me realize my area, Utah, which is stunning and full of good people, really has no culture to speak of. Sure, we have a few defining characteristics but very few brilliant exports. I've never been to the South. I have friends who have, including one dear friend who spent eight months going to school in Louisiana. I am jealous. In another life, I'll be born a sweet, charming Southern girl, a spitfire who knows the names of all the plants in the bayou, who cooks black-eyed peas and eats grit cakes, someone who pens a novel while drunk on bourbon and wins the Pulitzer.
Movies like Forrest Gump

 and Fried Green Tomatoes?

They seem to make this envy worse. I'm ashamed to say it, but even when I watched Black Snake Moan

I swooned.
Someday I'll take a drive through the South, follow the Mississippi and see a live alligator. Don't worry though--I'll bring a sober tour guide and a shotgun.