Rural Wisconsin {Favorite Finds Friday}

I love driving through rural Wisconsin.  Always it feels fresh, and ripe for the discovery of some possibly brief but enticing new thing; always it feels familiar and comfortable and close to home.

Today I made the one-hour long drive from our home in far northern Illinois to Jefferson, Wisconsin.  Rather than taking our usual interstate route I opted for the alternate; the patchwork of state highways that registered only three minutes slower on my gps.  I could surely spare three minutes for a journey through the land rather than past it.

As I drove, 30toes playing Mother May I from their seats behind me, I began to notice how familiar the route felt, even upon entering the portion I had never traveled.  Certainly this is due to the character of the landscape itself; a patchwork, like the roads that cross it, of fields and farms and always distant tree lines.  It is a gently undulating expanse framed on all sides by an open horizon.  Surely I have seen this view before.  Surely I have loved it before, and felt its familiar comfort and promise. 

I spent the rest of the day attempting to keep my attention on this familiar newness and wondering what else was to be found in it.   

This is the affirmation of the everyday; the brilliant rhythm of the familiar that repeats and repeats again.  I am reminded that always I return to nature for the answer, for the inspiration, for the reason.  Always I look to the land when I am seeking; not to take me away, but to bring me home. 

With gratitude,

Joanna