Beloit, IA--June 12, 2009

My old friend Harold Aardema used to talk about Beloit, Iowa, a tiny burg right on the Big Sioux River, where once upon a time there stood an orphanage for kids, some of whom died there, he said, and we're buried in a small local cemetery. Occasionally, on a trip to Sioux Falls, we'd pass that way just to see the most beautiful land in the whole of northwest Iowa, the gentle hills along the river. 

Then, a student told me about the place, reminded me of the stories Aardema used to tell, the hills where an immigrant family set down roots. One of the kids, a bachelor gardener, tended Sioux Center's flower beds as assiduously as he did the scholars at Sioux Center Christian School, a man, a stern principal named only A. J. Boersma. 

I have a xerox copy of his life story I still would like to publish someday, even though its potential for sales is, sadly, even lower than a book of mine I'd like to publish. It's a grand story of rags-to-riches, Dutch Reformed style. I don't know that he ever made a million, but that doesn't mean he wasn't, in his own special way, fabulously wealthy. 

Anyway, I thought I'd go out and find that cemetery, and I did. But more than that, I found myself in the middle of caramel omniscience, gently breaking morning skies in a light fog that could not have been more tastefully drawn.

So, here's the catch I made the Saturday morning, one day in early June when I hit things just right. 

Don't mind me saying it--the visit was now 14 years ago--but that early morning sky could hardly be more beautiful, so I kept shooting.

Gorgeous shots abounded, to say the least. All I had to do is hit the shutter. The composition was by an artist named the Creator of Heaven and Earth. You may have heard of him. 

And, oh, yes, there was this, a memorial to the kids  who died here.

But bigger than death was the life all around, the sheer beauty of the land awakening with the Creator's touch on a Saturday morning in June, Beloit, Iowa. That's the Big Sioux back there.

All that life on a trip to a cemetery. What a great joy to have been there.