I was on my way to the airport after training some fellow soldiers from my lane as chaplain. The weather was about as textbook winter as one might ask for. It was like something out of a Robert Frost poem or perhaps like something from a Wordsworth poem of England’s countrysides. It was in the 40s temperature-wise. No wind. The air was heavy with mist and fog hovered much of the day over the fields.

In the distance were two images/pictures that moved me so deeply that I pulled the car off the side of the road and snapped a couple of pictures with my old iPhone.

To anyone who knows me well, he/she knows I love trees. Always have. This one in the fallow field captured my attention like a splash of cold water; I was absolutely arrested by the scene.

Farther along in the same massive field was this image of an old barn/home/both. It, too, grabbed me by the aesthetic throat.

Simple bucolic scenes like these cover the Midwest. These and countless other scenes are just some of the reasons I love coming up here to be with these soldiers. These scenes are shepherded by salt-of-the- earth folks, and the ways they love and tend their lands makes me track with their spirit, and grateful for the opportunities I have been granted to travel our nation and try and minister to her soldiers.