Yep, East Texas is a big part of the Piney Woods region. My family owns ten acres of land, slightly less than half of which is nicely forested. Most of that is pine, oak, and sweetgum though. At one point we had a pecan tree and a fig tree, but Hurricane Rita was not kind to them. (The poor fig tree was crushed by the tallest, oldest pine on the property.)
I'm pretty much the antithesis of an outdoorsy person, but I really do like that my back yard has what are essentially quiet forest paths (if you ignore the highway noise, heh) to walk around when I'm feeling contemplative. At least when it hasn't been particularly rainy and turned everything to mud.