Adams County was my introduction to Pennsylvania over forty years ago and the land there is part of why I love this country. The fruit growing region in the mid and northern part of the county makes me feel as though I've come home every time I return there. I like to drive the back roads, over rolling hills, through long stretches of woods, instead of taking US Rte 30 to get there. The drive goes past fields of corn, soybeans and timothy, through orchards of apples and peaches, pears, plums and apricots. Old farmlands, in cultivation for over 250 years, populated here and there with original homesteads even older, are the last, rapidly disappearing vestiges of a wholly different America.
There is a hill I must crest on the eastern outskirts of Biglerville that presents me with a vista which never fails to take my breath away, no matter what the season or the weather. The distant western horizon undulates with the blue layers of the South Mountains, where, this evening, the pink-tinged, smoky-mauve clouds look like fat dumplings atop a rosy-pink-juiced peach cobbler. The storm that came through over the weekend ushered in more seasonable temperatures, lingering still, and the breeze blowing through the Jimmy's open windows is summer-soft.
I haven't lived in Adams County for twenty-five years, but every time I return, I feel like I'm going home, and my heart swells with emotion and weeps nostalgia - for what, I couldn't say. All I know is I feel like I belong there, in those hills, beside those fields. I fit in there; with the land, at least, if not with the people. It is where, for a short time, and for the first time in my life, I knew who I was, and liked being me.
Posted by Martha McLemore
The photo above is not mine, but can be found, with more photos of the area, here: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=adams+county%2C+pa+orchards&w=all&s=int&referer_searched=1
10 comments:
This is just beautiful, Martha. It's wonderful that these kind of places still exist, especially those that are so close to one's heart.
It is always good - if not essential - to have a landscape that both comforts and grounds us.
We can carry that landscape with us.
I have only been through that country once, and I have never forgotten it. It's something about the deep green of the vegetation and the rolling hills and the moody skies. My grandfather came from there. Maybe it's a racial memory!
"We know we belong to the land,
And the land we belong to is grand!"
Oops. Wrong state. (Oklahoma.)
What beautiful words. I know that feeling. It's how I feel when I return to Southern Indiana.
Since the whole of my stay in the USA was limited to Pennsylvania (albeit at the extreme eastern and western ends) I thought I'd better check how familiar I was with Adams County. The answer is: not at all. Conceivably I brushed past it while travelling on the weird old Pa Turnpike but that's as close as I got. A reminder that Pa is a very wide rectangle and that much of the centre is pretty wild. It's a state where you can still "go for a drive" just for the sake of driving. I have never heard of crops of timothy.
Americans often refer to counties when describing where they live but I wonder how familiar others - even those in the same state - are with these georgraphical identifiers. In Pittsburgh I believe we lived in Allegheny County but the only time that fact became relevant was at the time of the Allegheny State Fair. I would be interested to hear from other Americans about how strong the county connection (as opposed to state, city, town or village) is when they reminisce about where they live.
After reading your description of the luscious countryside I have to go and find something to eat.
It's strange but I feel the same way about northern England. We do indeed carry landscapes inside us.
beautiful-- some places not only get into the heart, they get into the bone.
thanks for this.
I sometimes think when you do find such places and carry them inside you, it is probably best to visit when you can, but perhaps not seek to go and live there. No where can remain meaningful like that in quite the same way when it gets associated with the everyday and its problems, I fear.
I'm not saying it's all in the imagination; those places do have a real quality for us, but I think they need to be imbued with longing and/or memory and kept at a certain remove to maintain their sacredness for us. But keeping them close enough is good!
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