Big Sky Country: A Field of Dreams

My husband and I were in the gamelands getting our daily exercise, and the cloud show overhead was extraordinary. So on the ride home (with my husband driving), I kept my camera out, and I decided to shoot a whole monochrome photo set of the local farm scenes and the sky.

The pictures include scenes from West Gatesburg Road (as in this shot) and Marengo Road. Both are fine back roads for a Sunday afternoon drive, which was a tradition my Pappy (my mother's father, and a photographer) always enjoyed.

Pappy and Grammy would load into the car on a Sunday afternoon and go driving around. They came to visit us kids on Sundays, Grammy in her lovely clothes and peep-toe shoes, and Pappy with his "Pappy dollars." Pappy always had a camera on or around him, like me, and he'd stop and take pictures, as I am wont to do.

So you could say I came by all of this honestly: the photography; the leisurely drives; the impulsive stops to see and document something interesting, beautiful, or unusual; my love of local rural scenes.

When I shot this picture, I was thinking that it reminded me a lot of something, a movie maybe. Then I realized what it was: Field of Dreams. If Shoeless Joe were here himself, he'd ask, "Is this Heaven?" In the film, Kevin Costner would answer, "No, it's Iowa!" But this fine farm scene is Pennsylvania, for reals. We have big sky country here too!

My soundtrack song is this one: Big Country, with In a Big Country.

In a big country dreams stay with you
Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive