Live Oak Plantation Road connected Thomasville Road and Meridian. Despite the business on the two main streets, Live Oak Plantation was lined with what, indeed, looked like southern plantations. Stretching green laws led to southern style mansions that seemed to have grown from the sandy ground themselves. Although the homes were stunning, they were not what captured the imagination of my six-year-old self. For nearly a mile, the road was graced with large oak trees. I don't know if these trees had sprouted naturally, or if some far-sighted person had planted them a century or so ago. Certainly, they provided much needed shade from the burdensome sun that shines year round in Tallahassee, but I knew in my young heart that they must "happened" for beauty alone. Their long boughs curved gracefully over the road, providing room enough for the Spanish moss which hung romantically over the road, like long locks of hair that cascade down a young woman's back.

Never having visited Palmyra or the "sacred" grove, and having no vision of a deciduous forest, my imagination took flight. Without doubt, God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, must have appeared to Joseph Smith in a grove such as this one. Its beauty was unparalled. I turned to G-Mother who was driving and insisted that this was indeed The Sacred Grove.

For the next ten years, while visiting my grandparents during the summer, we would frequently find ourselves driving down Live Oak Plantation. It was never our actual destination. However busy or rushed we were to get to the Tallahassee mall on Meridian, or back home to Killearn, my grandmother would slow down on that sacred road for me and chuckle over the name that I had given it so long ago.

Today, while walking Gloria to school, we passed through a sacred grove all her own. The path was short, and the leaves were red, but Glo could hardly contain herself upon seeing the beauty, and I was reminded of my own feelings of long ago.