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Any kind of weather suits me just fine

snowy woods, winter woods — Snowy woods. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

By Bruce Stambaugh

I can’t exactly tell you when the weather bug hit me. All I know is that the weather just fascinates me.

Maybe it started when I was a youngster. A summer thunderstorm would force the neighborhood gang of kids onto our front porch. Rained out of our outdoor mischief, we passed the time oohing and ahhing at the vivid streaks of lightning dancing across the sky.

College invigorated my interests all the more. Geography courses answered questions I didn’t even know to ask. My weather appetite intensified.

After I had graduated, I took a teaching position at Killbuck Elementary School and joined the volunteer fire department after moving to the village in the valley. When I learned that the National Weather Service depended on first responders as severe weather spotters, I was elated. I took the required course to become a trained spotter. Doing so enabled me to combine two interests into one, firefighting and weather.

fall clouds, dappled clouds, dappled sky, cumulus clouds — Dappled sky. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

Both my school days and my volunteer firefighting days ended years ago. However, my obsession with the weather continues.

I keep an eye on weather forecasts for good reasons. The lives of others might depend on it. In today’s electronically connected world, I get the word out about potential severe weather through posts on social media just in case a few people don’t hear about the impending storm.

I likely won’t ever outgrow the desire to watch the weather. When the National Weather Service posts a storm watch near where I happen to be, I go into proactive mode watching various radar and severe weather pages on the Internet.

Thanks to technology, a spotter’s approach to watching for severe weather has significantly changed over the decades. Instead of going to the highest hilltop with the best vantage point and viewing from a vehicle, I can stay in the safety of my home. There I track the storm on my computer and by watching out the windows for rotating clouds, hail, and any flooding I can see.

cumulonimbus clouds, storm clouds, cloud reflections — Cloud reflections. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

It’s a little different story in the winter. Spotters help out the National Weather Service by measuring the snow the old-fashioned way, using a ruler. Of course, the measurement has to follow protocol. Spotters measure snow depths that accumulate on a board elevated above the ground.

Morning and evening, the local weather service office receives reports of new snow totals from dozens of snow spotters across the coverage areas. Doing so helps the professionals in evaluating their forecasts and even in issuing weather advisories. After all, frozen precipitation is the hardest type for career meteorologists to predict accurately.

Like many of the other community activities I’ve done in my life, being a weather spotter is a voluntary position. Knowing I am only one of many who help the weather service get the weather word out to citizens is all the pay I need.

Between tornadoes, blizzards, flash floods, damaging straight-line winds, and lightning strikes, I’ve seen a lot of wild weather in my lifetime. It may sound a little strange to say this, but I enjoy reporting what I find.

I suppose I do it both for the thrill and the necessity to relay what I have observed. Helping the official weather forecasters, even in some small ways, gives me great satisfaction.

I guess I’m just a weather geek at heart. I’ll gladly wear that badge of honor as I forge into the next snowdrift.

wheat shocks, striaght line wiind damage — Wheat shocks toppled by straight line winds from a severe thunderstorm. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

What’s all the fuss about Groundhog Day?

The 2014 version of Punxsutawney Phil. (Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)

By Bruce Stambaugh

Another Groundhog Day is upon us. What’s all this silliness about anyhow?

I’ve never entirely understood the ubiquitous clamor over this unofficial holiday. Even as a youngster, I remember watching the Today Show on television on Feb. 2. Willard Scott, the show’s weather guy, got so excited if the groundhog didn’t see its shadow. Folklore says that means spring will arrive sooner than the official date.

That’s just nonsense, of course. Wild animals have some sense of impending doom. I heard stories about deer fleeing the lowlands along the Killbuck Creek in Holmes Co., Ohio well ahead of the devastating flooding in 1969.

But a groundhog, or if you prefer woodchuck, whistle pig or land beaver, predicting when spring will really arrive? I don’t think so.

The town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania garners the most attention on Groundhog Day. The good folks of the hard-to-spell town have been hosting the official celebration of this hoax of a holiday ever since 1886.

I was surprised to learn the event had been going on that long. It’s gained in popularity since the release of the Hollywood movie of the same name in 1993. Since then, folks swamp the little west central Pennsylvania burg wanting to get a look at the four-legged weather prognosticator from Gobbler’s Knob.

groundhog, Bruce Stambaugh — Having dug a hole under our back porch, this groundhog seemed to ponder whether it should enter the baited trap set for it. It didn’t. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

Townspeople couldn’t be happier to host the throngs of curious visitors for their festival. They gladly take their money for food, lodging and trinkets. I guess in the dead of winter, people will do about anything to break cabin fever.

I was also intrigued to learn that Groundhog Day was a carryover from traditions in Europe. Most of them were borne around a religious holiday called Candlemas, where clergy blessed candles that were distributed to parishioners.

The candles were lighted on February 2. If the candlelight was needed due to dreary weather, the populous took that as a sign that winter was waning.

Who were these kind but superstitious folks? Why Germans, of course. And what nationality predominated in swarming through Penn’s Woods in the pioneer days of our great country? Why Germans, of course.

In clearing the land for farming, they found groundhogs rather numerous. The four-legged varmint also happened to resemble an animal from their homeland, the hedgehog.

In fact, pioneer farmers in New England had a very practical saying. “Groundhog Day, half your hay.” In other words, if a farmer had used up more than half of the hay stored for the winter, lean times could be ahead for the livestock if winter lingered.

So it seems that I might have to ease up on the good folks in Punxsutawney. Why not have a little fun and make a little money in the process?

Having something to celebrate at winter’s midpoint may not be such a bad idea, after all. Given the day’s history, it does have a purposeful origin. As time and traditions both transformed, a case can be made that Candlemas morphed into Groundhog Day.

I don’t see either the day or the fuss going away anytime soon. We can thank the Germans for creating the tradition. We can thank the hyperventilating media for extending it.

I guess this just goes to show that even when you think something is a bit unusual, you can still learn from it if you keep an open mind. I won’t demean Groundhog Day again. Neither am I planning on celebrating it.

I will light a candle in the day’s honor. While I’m at it, I better check my supply of hay, too.

shadows, winter — Long winter shadows. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

Sadness fills a beautiful, peaceful valley

Rock Doves, pigeons, barn roof — Pigeons roost atop Ivan’s barn. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

By Bruce Stambaugh

Sadness has come to my favorite valley.

Now, there are plenty of beautiful valleys in our area. For me to say I have a favorite sounds a bit selfish. It’s not. It’s personal.

To be sure, I don’t own the undulating acreage. I just enjoy it.

You can’t find a name for my favored hollow on any map. I’ve never heard anyone refer to it by name in the three decades my wife and I have lived here.

Amish school, one-room school, Drushel Knoll School — Drushel Knoll School. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

An Amish one-room school, Drushel Knoll, might come the closest to naming this wide-open expanse of land surrounded by wooded hills. Drushel was a pioneer landowner where the school sits. The knoll is nothing more than a rise in a sweeping pasture.

To call it a valley might even be a stretch. A quiet brook lazily meanders northwest through this productive, fertile ground. For the longest time, the land was all farmland. Farmsteads dotted hill and dale. More recently, a few residences have also popped up along the skinny township road that rises, falls and rises again east and west.

This is the sacred place where I take my physical and mental exercises. When the weather is decent, I love to walk this humble road over to Ivan’s farm.

Amish school children, scholars walking — Students walk to the Amish school in the valley. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

I will continue to do so, but Ivan will no longer be there. As he fixed his lunch bucket for work one recent morning, he collapsed and was gone. He was only 65.

Ivan would bicycle by our home on the way to and from his job at a local business we can see from our home. Not long ago, he had turned the hard but satisfying task of farming over to his energetic son, whose wife was one of my former students.

As my wife and I entered the farm building where Ivan’s body lay at rest, friends and warm handshakes greeted us. We paid our last respects to this quiet, hard-working man, husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend.

Tears flowed as we bent to share our condolences with Ivan’s widow and family. In the Amish tradition, family members sit in rows of facing chairs as mourners quietly pass through, shaking hands left and right, nodding heads, sharing moments, memories, and sorrowful tears.

summer sunset, Ohio's Amish country — The pond behind Ivan’s barn reflected a beautiful summer sunset. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

Wife, children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends, all expressed grace in the Amish manner, through their quiet, reverent presence. It was a communion of sorts, tears for wine, a gathering of steadfast people its bread.

I marveled at the strength of the family, their genuine kindness and positive comments even in the face of their grievous loss. As I scanned the forlorn faces, I saw folks I had not seen for years. Our spirits mutually embraced without actually hugging one another.

When you live in a rural community for decades, you take for granted the integral connections of one family to another. Being among those assembled mourners, the closeness and goodness of our common kinship washed over me.

Ivan was a good man, a quiet man, a respected man, a man of peace. To a member, his family mirrors his pleasant disposition.

It seemed impossible that such sadness could hover over this lovely setting, home, family. And yet, it did. It does.

A different kind of beauty flooded my favorite valley. The loving grace of community responding to a stricken, grieving family surpassed that of the basin’s enchanting pastoral physical features.

Even in death’s darkness, the light radiated in my beloved valley.

Amish farm, walking — My grandsons check out birds on the fence and phone line on a summer’s morning walk. Ivan’s farm is in the background. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015

Don’t let the gray skies get you down

gray day, dreary day, Bruce Stambaugh — Gray day. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015.

By Bruce Stambaugh

It’s not easy living in the third cloudiest location in the nation. Like it or not, that’s just what the residents of Northeast Ohio have to do.

That’s not good for people with Seasonal Affective Disease (SAD). Recurrent gray days negatively affect their daily outlook. Folks with SAD have to suffer through as best they can. I can’t imagine how they do it. It’s hard enough to wake to one gray day after the other without that affliction.

I speak from experience having been a Buckeye all my life. Strung together like a necklace of discolored pearls, these series of overcast, dull days, can get us all down if we let them. We shouldn’t.

I will be glib and say there is good news anyhow. Minute-by-minute, daylight is increasing. That’s little consolation to all those overcome by the seasonal dreariness.

Winter mornings in Ohio seem darker and colder than ever. A minute of daylight tacked on a day at a time isn’t all that inspiring, helpful or meaningful.

We can always hope for an Alberta Clipper to roll through with a few inches of snow and frigid temperatures. The passage of the front usually brings clear, crisp days.

eastern bluebird, songbirds, Bruce Stambaugh — Songbirds like this male Eastern Bluebird can help cheer up any dull day. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015.

In addition, the fresh coat of light, fluffy snow brightens the dull, dormant ground. A million diamonds sparkle day and night, as long as the moon shows its face. Even if it is cloudy, I find a certain joy in the crunch, crunch, crunch of each step to retrieve the mail or fill the bird feeders.

Indeed, these dreary, damp, cold days are what they are. They don’t have to keep us from keeping on. We have to remember that each day is a gem of a gift to treasure all unto itself.

For me, that is an important reminder. The start of a new year means we enter winter’s hardest times. The season’s coldest temperatures, harshest weather, and often the worst storms are likely yet to come.

All things considered worse scenarios than depressing weather abound in this world. Can we look beyond our personal life space to see them?

A friend of mine has terminal cancer. He unabashedly asks others what they think about each night before they go to sleep. Do they believe they’ll awake in the morning? Are they ready to pass on?

Those are blunt, but necessary questions for each of us at any age, healthy or ill. At the end of another day, what do we contemplate? Can we accept dismal skies or broken relationships, or unsatisfying vocations?

Will we wake in the morning to a new day or a new world? None of us, regardless of our situations, knows. I do know this, however. Time is fleeting, gloomy skies or clear skies.

How will we use each day we are given to the benefit of others no matter our personal station in life? Will we let the weather get us down, or will we radiate sunshine that warms and enlightens others?

Regardless of where we live, that is always a challenge, isn’t it? I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions. But at this stage in my life, I only want to be helpful to others, those in my household, my family, my community, and even strangers I encounter in my daily duties.

My personal challenge this New Year is not to let the gloomiest weather dim the day at hand. What’s yours?

Amish farm, fresh snow, rural landscape — A fresh layer of snow helps brighten rural landscapes. © Bruce Stambaugh 2015.

Another year, another round of human folly

Amish buggy, rural road, Holmes County Ohio — Down the rural road. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

By Bruce Stambaugh

Each year I record some of the more arcane, inane, and maybe even insane happenings that tend to escape headlines. Here are a few of the highs and lows of human endeavor from 2014.

Jan. 9 – An off-duty Houston, Texas firefighter extinguished a fire in an 18-wheeler by using the truck’s cargo, cans of beer.

Jan. 31 – Sparked by static electricity, methane gas from a herd of dairy cows in Rasdorf, Germany exploded, nearly blowing the roof off the barn.

Feb. 22 – Released state records showed that a Spirit Lake, Iowa man was fired and lost his unemployment benefits because he used a forklift to retrieve a candy bar from a malfunctioning vending machine.

March 19 – Greentown, Ohio, volunteer firefighter Justin Deierling proposed to his girlfriend, Megan Zahorec, an elementary teacher, during a scheduled fire drill at her school.

March 24 – Former TV Judge Joe Brown was arrested in Memphis, Tennessee for contempt of court.

April 16 – A three-year-old toddler was reunited with his mother after he was found playing with toys in a claw machine in a bowling alley across the street from his home in Lincoln, Nebraska.

May 5- A Loveland, Ohio man, whose job was to collect coins from parking meters, pleaded guilty to stealing $20,000 in quarters over eight years.

May 15 – The University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio announced that it was replacing 75 percent of its lawn because a weed killer had accidently been used instead of a fertilizer on 54 of the campus’ 72 acres.

June 4 – While participating in a drill about what to do if a gorilla escaped, a Spanish zoo worker dressed in a gorilla suit was shot with a tranquilizer gun by a veterinarian, who didn’t know about the exercise.

July 9 – An 80-year-old American agave plant acquired and housed in the botanical garden at the University of Michigan since 1934 finally bloomed.

July 26 – The Colorado Rockies baseball team gave away 15,000 replica jerseys of All-Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki with his last name misspelled.

August 25 – A masked gunman robbed three people riding in a horse-drawn buggy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

August 31 – Leandra Beccera Lumbreras of Mexico turned 127, the oldest living person in the world.

West Virginia, ginseng hunting, — Ginsing country. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

September 1 – Ginseng season started in West Virginia with the herb expected to bring more than $700 per pound.

September 15 – To celebrate the anniversary of the Suez Canal, Egypt published a commemorative stamp, only to realize that the canal pictured was the Panama Canal.

October 8 – A study released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rated Mississippi as the U.S. state with the worst quality of life.

October 13 – Police in Akron, Ohio said that they arrested 50-year-old David Scofield of Lancaster after he pulled over an off-duty police officer using a fake police car and uniform.

October 20 – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was named the winner of Gawker.com’s Worst Accent contest.

November 11 – Police in Oslo, Norway responded to an apartment where screams were reported only to find a man upset because he lost a game of chess to a computer.

December 3 – A pet cat survived for more than a month when it accidentally stowed away in a moving box when its human family relocated from Norfolk, Virginia to Hawaii.

December 15 – The Merriam-Webster Dictionary named “culture” as its word of the year.

I don’t know if there was much culture or not in the mumbo-jumbo of shenanigans during 2014. Let’s hope 2015 brings a culture of blessings, peace and civility all around.

winter sunset, December sunset, Ohio sunset — The sun sets on another year. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

Patience is a virtue, especially at Christmastime

family, Christmas, family holiday gathering — The night before Christmas. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

By Bruce Stambaugh

Patience is a virtue, especially at Christmastime.

Some people, however, just can’t wait for Christmas. I’m not talking about the giddy children anxiously anticipating what might lie beneath the festooned tree on Christmas morning.

Holiday commercials, promotions, and displays showered themselves upon us well before Halloween. Decorations and pre-holiday sale items sprouted in retail stores before autumn leaves had reached their peak.

Every year, the onslaught of Black Friday opens the floodgate to the Christmas shopping season. Besides profit, I wondered what the rush was all about. If there is a war on Christmas, surely this is it. The commercialization of a blessed, annual holiday demeans the true meaning of the season.

For me, Christmas is about waiting, not rushing. Life passes by in a flash the way it is. Why accelerate it all the more, especially at such a celebrative occasion? Let’s treasure this special time of year.

Christmas tree, Bruce Stambaugh — Christmas tree. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

Christmas is about expectation. My childhood memories are filled with fondness for the days leading up to Christmas. Whether real or imagined, a certain inexplicable stir was in the air filling us with excited glee.

At school, crayon-colored paper ornaments, stars, wreaths, and candy canes replaced the finger painted turkeys on the classroom windows. We drew names for the gift exchange, one-dollar limit.

Children began combing through Sears catalogs to assist them in making their Christmas lists. Santa got them in plenty of time.

Those days between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to just linger. Despite the hustle and bustle of the season, it was as if time ticked in slow motion.

The excitement and anticipation of the holidays built with each passing day. Christmas was the mountaintop, and we started climbing the slope one step at a time only after Thanksgiving.

nativity scene, Christmas, hope — Nativity. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

Our father enjoyed the holiday season as much or more than his five offspring. On a frigid night, Dad loaded us up in the family sedan to welcome Santa’s arrival at the end of the annual Christmas parade in the downtown blue-collar Ohio city where we lived.

We visited city centers in Akron, Canton and Cleveland more to window shop than Christmas shop. Customer friendly department stores with familiar names like Higbee’s, Polsky’s, and Kobacker’s all decorated their display windows with exquisite Christmas scenes.

Those stores are no more. A lot has changed since then.

Amid all of today’s commercials, online ads, daily deluges of discounts on everything from candles to Cadillac’s, it’s easy to get caught up in the race to Christmas. Doesn’t all of that actually run counter to the Advent season itself?

Historically, Christmas was all about hope, waiting, and watching. When the actual event occurred, only a few people recognized what had happened. Even then, most didn’t seem to fully comprehend.

Shepherds and kings from afar were struck with glorious awe at the event we now call Christmas. Others never even noticed

advent candles, Christmas decorations — Advent candles. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

because of their preconceived notions. As that story has been retold year after year, generation after generation, the characters involved in that first Christmas became the icons of how we now celebrate the season, Santa not included of course.

Christmas is a couple of weeks away. Will we rush our way to it, or will we wait and watch, and anticipate all the precious joys the day and the season have to offer?

Maybe it’s just my age. But I’m going to do my best to savor this season one day at a time. How about you?

The eyes have it

smiling, happy, joy, eyes — The eyes have it. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

I was fortunate to tag along with Penny Diggs and her daughter, Sandy Strouse, both of Seaford, VA, recently as they toured Ohio’s Amish country. Penny had won the Lehman’s Sweepstakes earlier in the year and chose to visit over Thanksgiving. Her prize included tours of the five businesses of the Best of Ohio’s Amish Country marketing coop group. Company owners led most of the tours. I took this photo in Kidron, OH at the conclusion of the tour of Lehman’s, led by founder, Jay Lehman, and Glenda Lehman Ervin, Vice President of Marketing for Lehman’s.

Penny didn’t leave her southern hospitality at home either. She was so excited and appreciative about winning that she brought gifts for some of Lehman’s staff.

Penny was describing all that she had experienced to an interviewer when I captured this moment. The expression in her eyes, plus the joy sparkling from her adoring daughter, was an easy pick for my Photo of the Week. “The eyes have it” indeed.

Blowing in the wind

Photography keeps you on your toes. It enables you to always be on the lookout for that unexpected moment in time that will change in an instant. It forces you to focus on what’s right in front of you when you really intended to capture something else.

Such was my situation on the evening of Oct. 23, when we could view the beginning of a partial solar eclipse just before sunset. An Amish friend of mine, who is a real stargazer, invited me to watch the partial eclipse with him. I picked him up at his home near Charm, Ohio, and we drove a half mile up to the top of a ridge where a long limestone driveway wound down to an Amish farm. Three strands of barbed wire fence kept the livestock in the pasture west of the drive.

While we waited for the eclipse to begin, we tried to stay warm even though the sun shone brightly. Our ridge top viewing spot also exposed us to a persistent and chilly northwest wind. It was the combination of the sun’s slanting rays and the invisible wind that illuminated an amazing phenomenon. The sun exposed hundreds, if not thousands, of spider web strings that blew horizontally away from the barbed wire. Stitched to their barbed wire anchors, the strings glowed like silver thread in the setting sun.

I began clicking away. However, my first few shots were too close to the fence. The webs stretched out so far that they looked like scratches across the digital photo. I stepped to the left, and lowered the camera to capture my Photo of the Week, “Blowing in the wind.”

Walking home

Amish couple, Holmes County Ohio, autumn leaves, country scene — Walking home. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

This time of year, the mixed deciduous leaves in Ohio’s Amish country are at their peak. You might expect me to choose a photo of a pastoral scene of a stand of golden sugar maples, or a treeline of reds, yellows and oranges as my Photo of the Week. Instead, I have selected this simple shot of an older Amish couple slowly walking home on a mid-October Sunday evening.

I was taking landscape photos of the lovely leaves. Near home, I stopped to take a photo of the golden sugar maples at my neighbor’s colonial style farmhouse. As I exited my vehicle, I noticed another neighbor, Christ, walking down the small knoll in front of the home. I respect the Amish desire to not be photographed. So I waited until he would pass. When he reached where I was standing, we began talking as neighbors will do. Soon his wife joined us. He had come to meet her on her usual evening stroll. Christ’s knees no longer allow him to accompany her on the steeper hills his wife walks.

I told them that I wanted to take a picture of the Kaufman house with the trees so nicely brightened by the evening sun, but that I had waited until he was no longer in the frame. Christ, who is 82, just smiled and said, “I don’t mind if you take my picture.” So I did, making sure to honor their beliefs by not getting a face shot.

Having this congenial elderly Amish couple in the foreground of the photo opposite the tans of the unharvested soybean field added a touching human element to an already pretty picture. “Walking home” is my Photo of the Week.

The good and the bad of being noted

By Bruce Stambaugh

When I learned that Holmes County, Ohio ranked third in the world on National Geographic’s list of best places to view fall leaves, I smiled broader than a white oak leaf. I was overjoyed for the national notoriety of our picturesque county.

I’m not sure what criteria they used to rank the global locales to gain such stature. I’d like to think that there was more to it than seasonally colorful leafage.

Amish buggy fall leaves by Bruce Stambaugh — Pretty ride. © Bruce Stambaugh 2014.

I hoped our fertile fields and comely homesteads, our quaintness and inherent hospitality helped. It’s hard to resist chestnut horses and black buggies driven by friendly, plainly dressed passengers passing sun-drenched woodlots flashing all of autumn’s bright, warm colors.

The area’s fall beauty is ubiquitous. From Glenmont to Winesburg, from Walnut Creek to Lakeville, from Limpytown to Lake Buckhorn, the autumn vistas are amazing.

Then my grateful grin narrowed to a willow leaf’s width. I winced just thinking about our already clogged roads during the fall.

I was glad our bucolic area had received such a high recommendation from such a reputable source. But I found the potential consequences of that distinction a bit intimidating. How in the world would our infrastructure handle the onslaught of additional leaf lookers that were sure to appear?

Though pretty year-round, there’s no arguing that fall is prime time when it comes to the natural beauty here. A bonus is that the scenery is always changing given our varying topography and variable weather. It can be sunny in the highlands, and socked in with soupy fog in the lowlands.

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In minutes that scenario most likely will change with the wind or the warming of the atmosphere or both. One minute you can barely see your hand in front of your face, and the next the sun is illuminating superb settings.

There’s beauty around every turn no matter where you are exploring, and in Holmes County curves and hills abound. You can circumnavigate the area every day and watch the scenes transform.

Having lived here all of my adult life, I’m likely prejudiced about the splendor of the local landscapes. Given this recognition, forget about the four corners of the world. The four corners of Holmes County are all you need to satisfy your desire for leafy vistas.

There are just too many good spots to view leaves to even think about making a personal list to share. Instead, just grab a map, drive in any direction and look. You’ll see what I mean. You can’t get lost either. All roads lead to somewhere.

A word of caution is in order, however. Our narrow, curvy roads are heavily traveled, with few places to safely pull off for photos. You may have to just take it all in as you go, and only stop where it is safe to do so.

Holmes County Rails to Trails depot by Bruce Stambaugh

Biking on the Holmes County Trail by Bruce Stambaugh

Horses on Holmes County Trail by Bruce Stambaugh

Fall leaves Holmes County Trail by Bruce Stambaugh

Bridge on Holmes County Trail by Bruce Stambaugh

View in fall along the Holmes County Trail by Bruce Stambaugh

Colorful drive on the Holmes County Trail by Bruce Stambaugh

There is an exception to that rule, however. The Holmes County Trail runs diagonally through the heart of the county for 15 miles from Killbuck to Fredericksburg. The photogenic panoramas and outdoor exercise will equally invigorate you.

The trail is for bicyclists, pedestrians, joggers, and horse and buggies only. No motorized vehicles are permitted, which makes for a safer, quieter trek to observe fall’s colors. The trail can be accessed in several locations, too, with vehicle parking provided.

I don’t recall what the first two locations were on National Geographic’s list. I just know that in the fall Holmes County is a giant, multihued maple leaf for all to admire.