Ride through southern Holmes worth it

Ride through southern Holmes worth it
                        

Letter to the Editor,

You may not have seen the idyllic beauty of Holmes County’s southern side in Richland Township waiting for you.

At the light in Nashville, head the few miles south to state Route 520 and then turn east, around the new vistas of beauty opening up all along the way, curves, up and down the hills, to see the miles and acres by the thousands of well-manicured fields that flow along the gently rolling hills, the living green of winter wheat taking off in its spring flush of growth and all of this interspersed with wooded acres and tree-studded ravines with the fields closing in around them, embracing them as along the Norwegian coastline the arms of the sea reach inward to embrace the majesty of the mountains to form the world-famous fjords.

These fields and wooded areas of the Stitzlein and Grassbaugh family farms utilize the hills and valleys to create our own Holmes County style of fjords, perhaps even more impressive than the color photo I remember seeing in our fourth-grade social studies book at Fryburg School of a fjord in Norway, an impression that never left me over all the years.

And the reverie of the moment brings to mind the lines by Emily Dickinson:

“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.”

Thank you Stitzlein and Grassbaugh families for giving us this Holmes County moment of reverie. And the reverie of the moment may take us also to the words of a hymn:

“O’er the hills the sun is setting,

And the evening draweth nigh;

Gently drops the gentle twilight

Of another day is gone,

Gone for aye, its race is over,

Soon the darkening shades will come,

Still ‘tis sweet to know at evening,

We are one day nearer home …

To the green fields and the fountains of a land beyond the sky.”

Yes, the ride down to Holmes County’s southern side may be worth your while.

Paul Stutzman

Millersburg


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