All three of the Guardians of the Portal books are set in the Ozark Mountains in northern Arkansas, in a fictitious town called Mecksville.
It wasn’t always like that. It was always going to be set in a sleepy small town, the kind of place teenagers of all eras dream of escaping, but at first, Mecksville was in Nebraska. Nebraska wouldn’t work, though, for a few different reasons. For starters, the hero of the story is an ordinary guy who can shift into a panther. I couldn’t imagine a panther roaming freely through the broad, open plains of Nebraska. In my mind’s eye, he was never exposed on an open plain; he was always shrouded within the darkness and mystery of the forest. The closed, quiet nature of the forest suited both the story and its hero.
Nebraska became Louisiana.
Louisiana, though, is swampy. Bayous and swamp lands, Spanish moss and live oaks — these weren’t quite right, either. Besides the fact that I don’t personally know much of anything about swamps, I just didn’t see my hero fighting off his bad guys in a swamp.
I traced a line north from Louisiana and found a land that I already know and love: the Ozark Mountains. Mecksville landed somewhere between Ozark, Arkansas, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, not too far south of the Missouri border.
The Ozarks are a region I know well, and not just because I read Where the Red Fern Grows about five times during my childhood. (That’s a heartbreaking tale, by the way; don’t read it unless you can watch Old Yeller without crying yourself to sleep for several nights in a row.) I’m not from the Ozarks myself, but my family is. Most of the time I spent with my cousins growing up was consumed with running around fields and forests, exploring caves, building forts, letting my grandma pick the ticks off of me after a day playing beneath cedar trees.
My family calls themselves “hillbillies,” a name they wear with pride. I found out in my research for The Portal and the Panther that Ozark High School, the real high school that mirrors Mecksville’s fictitious one, actually has the hillbilly as its mascot. How about that. Call an Ozarkian a hillbilly, and their chest will swell with pride. Call them rednecks, and you’ve deeply insulted them.
But what’s the difference between a hillbilly and a redneck? You should ask my father. He can wax poetic on that topic for long hours. His main beef seems to be that rednecks work other people’s land and other people’s farms; hillbillies work their own land and their own farm.
Shrug. Still seems like six of one, half-dozen of the other to me.
Ozark culture isn’t all that different from Appalachian culture. They ARE different, I can tell you that, but it’s hard to say exactly how. I almost want to say — and before you read what’s coming, let me just preface it by saying it’s only a gut feeling and not backed up by any kind of fact — that Ozarkians are more optimistic than people of Appalachia. Appalachian people seem to me to be beaten down by history and by poverty. Ozarkians often have the same kind of poverty, but they don’t feel as defeated to me. There’s still a strong family structure in place in many cases, there are still towns that, in their own way, are thriving, even after agribusiness pushed the family farm out of business. By comparison, Appalachia seems more bereft to me. But again, that’s just my own view.
Photo credits:
Forest path: Matt Peoples via photopin cc
Moonlit bridge: aforero via photopin cc
Small town: joseph a via photopin cc