I woke early on the Sunday morning I drove to Bethel to visit with Karl and Kym Wadensten and gather notes for our January/February cover story, “Snowbound in Bethel.” I was on the road north before seven. As the sun rose and cast a glow over that rare mid-November day, I couldn’t help but pull my car over several times and capture the scenes that caught my eye as I raced up Route 26.

I could have spent the whole morning watching the sun rise over the austere beauty of the Shaker village at Sabbathday Lake.

 Outside West Paris, I stopped at a closed Rest Area to walk the dog and captured my waving shadow on a rock beside a flume:

A little further down the road I found a sawmill yard about half-full with timber. “This yard’s usually totally full by this time of year,” a guy working the yard told me, “but what with the price of diesel this year…”

The library in Woodstock made me think of all the trees it must have taken to make all the books I love.

I had a friend named Liz in high school and we called her Lizzie. When I saw this gravestone in the yard next to the Union Church in Locke Mills, I thought of Lizzie and I hoped that wherever she was, she was happy.

When I turned on to Sunday River Road, this leafless apple tree took my breath away.

Sometimes there’s just nothing better than simplicity.

As I bore right at a fork in the road and neared the Wadensten’s house, the Lower Sunday River Schoolhouse (built circa 1895) cut a simple silhouette against the sky.

The air feels kinetic in the autumn, heavy with memory and hope. This red, metal-roofed barn reminded me of my grandparents’ barn.

Time and again I find that the obvious thing usually isn’t the important thing. When I pulled over to snap a photo of a quaint covered bridge, I skidded down the riverbank hoping to find a good angle to shoot from.

That’s when I discovered this old stonewall disappearing into the water; the cloud-filled sky reflected on the water’s surface.

As Proust said, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

Joshua Bodwell, Associate Editor