Yesterday’s landscape reminded me of Scotland: bleak and bare and beautiful. There’s a stretch of road between Petersburg and Moorefield, West Virginia, that runs along the edge of a broad valley. A light rain was falling (unlike the photo above, taken on the trip out). Dark clouds filled the sky but a thin band of clear sky beckoned at the horizon. It was a battle between dark and light. There was plenty of autumn color in the highlands, and thin curls of smoke rose from the chimneys of houses perched on the ridgetops.

What must it be like to live in such beauty? To open a door, to step out on a porch and see a broad valley spread out below. Does it make for an open mind? an open heart?