My grandma lives in a small town in southern Ohio which nobody's ever heard of. It's the type of place where everyone knows everybody else, and they entertain themselves with community potlucks, hunting deer in the expansive forests, and hanging out at my grandpa's tiny ice cream shop. I go to this rustic town every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and this is what I remember seeing a few years ago, on an unusually cold Thanksgiving day.
The tall, bleak trees, stripped bare of the green leaves that spring would bring to them in three months' time, loomed over the barren pasture that had once been home to wildflowers and bushes of plump, juicy blueberries. The bitterly icy wind whirled through the gray trees, which raised their branches and waved in a dance of creaky eloquence to the music of the faint, eerie howl that whispered throughout the wintry countryside.

The ice that clung to the dead grass crunched and the brittle twigs that had fallen from the lifeless tree snapped under our booted feet as we ventured into the frozen pasture. It was Thanksgiving, and celebration was in the air despite the grim weather as we embarked on our annual trek into the wilderness. Leaving behind the civilization of the simple, rural house, we wandered as far as our endurance could carry us. The Appalachian foothills beyond the vast woodland hung like smoke in the distant horizon, the haze of muted colors discernable but mysterious and unreachable as the stars.

The sky, heavy with clouds, spread infinitely over the land, shrouding it with its poignant gloom. A single ray of sunlight shone misty and evanescent between the solid, gray sky. Industrial smog from the tiny town on the Ohio River a few miles away competed with the clouds to cover the area in a pall.

Walking into an open clearing, a surprising sight came before the eyes of the wanderers. Rising high above their heads, miles away but looking much closer, were red cliffs, bright clay-colored canyons that were beautiful in their contrast to the gray sky. It was a beautiful day, but in a different way than what would be expected. It was a memorable Thanksgiving.