The Moonlit Ride Home

Seen in the ladies' room of Bixler Hall at Ashland University. I would have planned to attend, but the Whipple One-Shot Buckmasters Club is meeting that night, and I'm bringing petits fours and doing the minutes.
Spotted on a sweet potato leaf in one of Ashland University's glorious flower beds: a male Fiery Skipper. Ahh. I love this bug, and rarely get to see it. For those who are stymied by skippers, its bright orange, lightly-dotted underwing is unique. Which is to say: a beginning butterflier who shies away from skippers has hope of recognizing it.

Filled with the thoughts given to me by the students in David Fitzsimmons' classes, and fueled by the good conversation David, his cool wife Olivia and I had in a sweet little Mexican restaurant afterward, I climbed in the car and started home. I passed Grandpa's Cheese Barn and Heiny's Cheese Chalet. Who comes up with these names? And why do they make me want to abstain from eating cheese for awhile? Could it be the juxtaposition of Grandpa and Cheese, or, worse, Heiny and Cheese? Ponder it. Now wipe your screen. Considered photographing them and decided to keep going. Not in the mood.

I desperately wanted to drive home in the evening light, along old Rte. 250 East through Amish country. A little thundershower had dropped a freshet of rain on the thirsty land, and the full moon was rising in silence over the fields.Coming down out of Apple Creek. Ahh, ahh, ahh. The misty trees folding into the fields, road as river, silo as finial.

The skies were mesmerizing.The moon was big and pink and kept getting itself caught in the wires and treetops. I kept pulling over to gawk and take pictures. The ride, not the destination, is the whole point, and that never seemed truer than tonight. I wished the moon would stay low and pink and that Highway 250 and the evening would go on forever.
How lucky I feel to live in Ohio, to be able to travel through pastoral landscapes like these, passing thin Standardbreds pulling black Amish buggies (images I yearn to capture, but can't bring myself to photograph).

Even birdwatchers have to stop for gas now and then, and where better than this station in Strasbourg?
Besides, it wuz $2.89 a gallon over to the Kaufmann Mart. sorry Kenn, sorry Lisa

My last picture of the night, Simon and Garfunkel singing in my mind's ear.

And the moon rose over an open field
We've all come to look for America.