The ruins of a house, and the moon. Photo by Nancy Wisser

As she was about to post this photo on her Facebook page, Nancy Wisser almost changed her mind. The dominant presence of the car's roof seemed to counter the pastoral beauty of the rest of the scene, which showed the moon glowing behind the ruins of a crumbling stone house. But then she realized that the car, with its shiny reflective surface, actually enhanced the beauty of the image.

Nancy wrote: "In this part of Pennsylvania, you literally cannot take a photo that doesn't include the work of human hands. There's not a natural square inch here. The oldest accounts talk of chestnut trees and oaks six feet or more in diameter, moose, mountain lion, wood bison, and huge forests and clearings, all at least partially managed, even then, by the indigenous people here. The ridge that seems so wild to many has been logged over at least twice, and the farmlands that appear so graceful on these rolling hills do not in any way resemble the land that the Lenape lived and hunted on and that the first Europeans saw. In eastern PA, we are all loving injured places, whether we think of them that way or not."