It’s quite easy to see the beauty of the ocean or the giant trees; easy to see the photo opportunity in beautiful canyons or majestic mountains.   When you’re traveling you’re always looking for that outstanding photo, the one that tells the big story.  It’s easy to miss all the little things when you’re going from here to there.

On this California trip the place between the big photos was mostly farm.  And just as I am at home I was drawn to the farmlands there.  The deep black fields, the orderly lines of crops or vineyards, the homesteads far off the road surrounded by acres of crops or by nothing at all.

I want to go back and concentrate on the places between here and there, the places that aren’t so easy to photograph, the places not so glamorous. Not so obviously beautiful.

I want to think about where our food comes from.  I watched cabbage being picked in a huge field, and though I only saw a moment of the action as our car raced by, I saw cabbage heads furiously being tossed by stooping men crowded close behind a trailer hauled by a tractor.

I want to think about the true cost of our food.  Affordable fresh food comes to us on the backs of people hunched over in a field.  And what do these people get paid?  I don’t know enough.  Just like the fast food workers fighting to earn a living wage, how are these cabbage pickers living?

I want to think about our food supply  I’d like to understand more.  And I’d like to show you how beautiful the places between here and there are, not from a speeding car, but more slowly, more carefully.

More thoughtfully.