Holmes County, Ohio has the world's largest concentration of Amish families, along with Mennonites and other "plain people". I was privileged to spend a few days this week driving around this beautiful area, drinking in the dreamlike pastoral scenery and meeting many of its people.
It rained the whole time I was there. While the cold and damp made it hard to enjoy the outdoors as much as I had hoped, and also limited my picture-taking, it rendered the landscape a brilliant, burgeoning green. Combine this fecund greenness with dramatic cloud-layered skies and delicate, hovering mists, and you have a nearly mythic landscape. Each time I rounded a curve or crested a ridge, I would be moved almost to tears by the beauty spread before me. These photos don't do it justice. It's hard for me to believe it was real!
