When you fly over almost any of the western states and look down, you will see huge circular fields. I used to wonder why the fields were circular; in my native Ohio, everything was rectilinear. The fields are circular because of the sprinklers that sweep our arches of life giving water.

When driving by these circular fields at 60 miles per hour, they don't look like circles. As Suzanne and I were heading up a long gentle rise in eastern Washington, I didn't understand what it was I was seeing at first. The puzzle took several ticks of the odometer to resolve.

Imagine a humongous square field with a circle inscribed in it. Now, what would you be seeing if a smart farmer had planted trees in perfect rows in the four corners of that field? That's what I was seeing, these trees oddly placed and apparently coming out of the earth as we came up the rise. I was enchanted.

But we were on a mission, so we didn't slam on the brakes and explore this wonder. After we got home, these magical trees in their corners kept calling to me. Finally, I yielded and drove back there, a major commitment of my time as the drive alone was three hours in both directions.

This etching is the outer result. The inner result -- this magical place forever fills my heart. Its location is of course, East of Othello.

East of Othello

William Wittmann

Varied Edition Etching 12 x 5 inches, 30.5 x 13 cm. $215, 190 unframed.