"Orchard Tabernacle"

Acrylic on paper, framed, image is 30"x 22 1/2"

This is a pecan orchard. Anyone familiar with middle Georgia knows you cannot travel very long on the state roads without encountering one. Their appearance is often a surprise after miles and miles of pasture and pine woods. It's easy to round a bend and there, rising before you is their tabernacle. The lovely arching upper branches always make me think they are lifting their shoulders and arms and fingers in some sacred rite of praise. Perhaps they are. Stately, elegant they permeate the air with their dusky smell, especially late in the day after the heat has gone and the mist at dusk begins its graceful accent through their branches. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, the sun casts luminous shadows through them and the orchard fills with indescribable buttery yellow light. Whenever I see it happening, I understand in my heart why some of the earliest holy places known to us were groves of trees.