Amish Country #2

These shots convey some of the local flavor: hand-lettered signs; impossibly narrow, winding roads; and a typical one-room Amish schoolhouse. I didn't take any pictures of the ubiquitous Amish buggies because it felt somehow intrusive. Maybe next time I'll get some shots outside one of the stores, with the horses tied to the hitching rail. It was too darn wet this week to do a lot of prowling around in the open!

A Trip to Amish Country

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!