Small Paradise: Central Pennsylvania Winter Scene

I had a dentist appointment in Boalsburg scheduled for first thing Wednesday morning: a couple of fillings (or as he calls them, reconstructions) needed. I wasn't looking forward to it. At my appointment in November when they told me I needed them, they asked: Before or After Christmas? And of course, I chose: After. Putting it off.

Anticipating an hour or more in the dentist's chair during which several full-grown people would try to stuff all of their hands into my mouth at once (plus numerous sharp metal implements, to boot), followed by several hours in which my mouth and tongue and lips were not my own, I offered myself two small comforts in self-consolation:

One, driving the "back way" to get there (and possibly getting a few minutes with my camera, to put me in a somewhat more zen mindframe than I started out in). And, two, an Oreo cookie sundae/shake at Burger King to follow the visit (cold things being kind to a sore, or at least numb, mouth).

My morning backroads drive took me past open farm fields filled with corn stubble and remnants of snow. The light had not hit yet, but the waiting world was full of predawn color. The gold of the fields. The hint of peach in the sky. The mountains blue in the distance. And shapes, too. The sweet swell of the hill, an orderly progression of rows wrapped around it. A farmer's art, beautiful, though perhaps unintentionally so.

And I thought to myself: rural central Pennsylvania is so beautiful any time of year that it almost makes my heart burst to look at it. I do not live a big life, just a small one; but it is full of grand and beautiful things. This place is a small paradise to me. Raised Methodist, I have high hopes for an afterlife, for a world to follow this one; yes, I do. But sometimes when I look around me, I think, "If there were no world beyond this one, it would still be enough."

A man I greatly admire once said that Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. And I was thinking about that as I stopped along a rural road to take this picture. No cars went by, no other sound nearby. Just my car idling while I parked along the road and took a few snaps. Pictures of paradise. MY paradise. Pictures taken by a girl with a grateful - no, not just that, a full to overflowing - heart.

Welcome to central Pennsylvania. But if you ever come here? Let me warn you: you will lose your heart and never, ever want to leave.


P.S. I sometimes include a song or two as a soundtrack to some of my pictures. For this one, the song I must pick, of course, is by John Mellencamp, back in the early days when he was still John Cougar (and with me, at heart, still being an 80s girl, after all): Small Paradise. Enjoy!