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
