December 10, 11:36 a.m. Headed to the farm at lunchtime to check out the exterior window trim mock-up.

Full-frame image, shot from the moving car. Best viewed large. I love everything that’s going on in this totally random grab.

October 25, 6:45 p.m. Leaving the farm, headed home for dinner.

October 20, 7:13 p.m. Driving from the farm to my parents’ house under a fingernail moon.

Minutes after I took this shot, I was shocked to see a huge coiled black snake in the middle of the road, reared up like a cobra looking right at me as I flashed by. He was a thick oily puddle and his upright white belly reflected my lights. The split-second shock of recognition stays with me.

October 18, 12:38 p.m. Headed to the farm to plant two Hinoki Cypress.
Shot from the car.

One of the reasons I left D.C. was to reintroduce more beauty into my everyday life. Sure, there’s beauty to be found in an urban metropolis, and I did. In the streak of red light as the Metro train disappears down a tunnel and in the one bright umbrella among dozens of black brethren bobbing down a dirty grey street. In how the lit-up Washington Monument shocked me with the wonder of my city situation each time it popped up on the blue-black horizon as I drove east on Route 50, coming home from a grocery run.

Having grown up surrounded by natural beauty, I loved the challenge of finding visual joy in a place so easy to dismiss as ugly. And yet, after five years, I yearned to return to trees and mountains and curved country roads. So the Daily Commute is my tribute to my new home, a valediction of my choice to leave behind the beauty of the city and start again in a very different place. It is, quite simply, how I see my world as I move through it everyday.