I have heard of "Bountiful, Maggie, but never read or watched it. Now I'll have to!   I never expected to enjoy this trip as much as I did. My sister has been doing genealogical research, and hooked up with with a distant cousin through her research who still lives in the area. She offered her mother and her to act as guides. Her mother, Lexie, is my grandmother's 1st cousin, though 20 some years younger. Lexie's mother's sister was my grandfather's mother, so they are related on both sides of my paternal family. They lived just over the ridge from one another. Lexie has lived in those remote hollows all her life. She's 87, deaf as a board, has to use a walker because her knees are shot, and absolutely sharp as a tack. She and her daughter, Carol, were absolutely delightful. As an added bonus, they are both big gardeners. Lexie has Wake Robin's blooming beside her house right now. A creek runs through her property, and there were all kinds of wildflowers coming up along the damp banks. It was she who grabbed a small shovel as we headed out the door to lay across the bars of the walker, saying that I might want to dig a few flowers from the graveyard on the Ross family homeplace as a remembrance. She talked at length about roaming the woods, ridges and hollers as a child, as did her daughter. They talked about a little valley covered with white trilliums, ginseng on hillsides, etc.

There were a couple of key cemeteries and my paternal great grandparent's farm that are going to require four wheel drive, drier weather, a guide who is not in a walker, and good hiking shoes to reach. Lexie and Carol have already arranged for the guides. My sister and I will go back this summer sans the elderly and infirm folks who would have to wait in the car so that we can explore these inaccessible places.

As an added bonus, we got Lexie's recipe for dried apple stack cake, which is probably the same one used by my grandmother. (Nannie was a wonderful cook and housekeeper who apparently resented every minute of it. Somewhere in her 70's she decided to retire from cooking, since Papaw got to retire from the railroad. When she did, she destroyed or tossed every single one of her recipes!)

The area of eastern Kentucky where we were is beautiful. Lots of creeks with good, broad bottom land, and low, steep mountains covered in hemlock and rhodedendron, with lots of cliffs and stony outcrops. The topsoil looks rich in the plowed fields, and bottoms, and the farms looked very well tended, with garden spots bright green with cover crops, and pasture rotated so that the cows haven't grazed and worn it down to nubbins. Unlike in southern West Virginia, where the hollers are much narrower, the steep sides of the mountains are not generally cleared for cattle to graze, but are apparently managed for timber.

The Ross family homeplace was a land-grant to my 3x great grandfather for military service. (I think the War of 1812.) When he died, it was divided among his sons, and when they died, it was further divided between their sons. Lexie says the arrangement was always that the boys got the land, and the girls got the timber. All of it has now been sold off and no Rosses own any of the original land-grant. Lexie was the last girl to have timber rights. The people who bought the part that has the original homesite keep the brambles and bushes knocked back in the cemetery well enough to insure the headstones can be found.

Lexie was apparently able to garden until just a couple of years ago. Her place was functional and pretty. A little orchard with apple and pear trees, a big spot that looked like it was probably last in corn, a section near the creek with rhubarb, horseradish and other perennial veggies, a patch of gooseberries, a few blueberries, and several small beds with herbs, peonies perennials. (And a pot on the front porch with artificial flowers stuck in the dirt. Lexie said Carol wouldn't let her stick artificial flowers in the garden beds:>)