I spent Friday night at a motel outside Lancaster and in the morning drove the backroads of Amish country. The last time I did this was two years ago, on an evening in May (before a family reunion) when everything wore a fresh coat of green; now the farms were draped in gold. There was less activity at the start of a fall day than there had been at the end of a spring one, when men rode their horse-drawn plows and barefoot girls in bonnets worked in gardens. But I did see a bearded elder stuffing leaves into a bucket with his grandson, and two boys directing a team of horses. Most everyone who saw me gave me a wave. I stopped on one empty road to take a picture of laundry hanging on a line, the clothes arranged in groups of black, white, and solid colors.
I’ve been visiting this world since I was a child – my mother grew up in Mechanicsburg – and I am always touched by its beauty: the rolling fields, the barns and silos standing tall, the large farmhouses shaded by trees, the shiny black buggies parked in drives. There is a pleasing neatness to the land that is never sullied by political signs.
