2009
01.31
01.31
Elkhart, Illinois – Elkhart Hill to be exact.
There’s a small, upscale grouping of homes on the hill. I took advantage of the wide spaces between homes to take this one.
The snow was melting today, with temperatures up to near 40F. The sky was nearly cloudless and the sun was shining.
I used my Sigma 10-20mm with a B+W circular polarizing filter for this one. Wide and the colors pop. My Pentax K20D brings out the detail in both the highligts and shadows.
A pleasant diversion for a Saturday afternoon.
Elegant and sharp. Another stunner. You just can’t top mother nature for capturing beauty at its primordial best. I recall that in college an Illinois State classmate of Mary Ann’s told us that Elkhart was a ‘moraine,’ as in this note at historic66.com: ‘Elkhart Hill is a glacial moraine that rises above the prairie. The landmark used to be an excellent orientation point for the Indians, who saw the shape of an elk’s heart in it.’ A moraine being the rocks and earth shoved ahead of the glacier as it pushes its way across the ancient ice field that covered our state; all that’s left when the glacier retreated, as it melted away. It could be that Elkhart is the terminus of the glacier that traveled farthest in the Ice Age. A real education to me. It certainly stands out as most unusual, looking as if it were a small ‘mountain’ on our rolling Central Illinois prairie.