Ave, Dr. Gilleland!

Dr. Mike Gilleland quotes a passage that sticks in my throat (in a good way), evoking something I see almost every time I do a cross-country walk. Here's part of the quote:

Along the Mincio lie the fields which Vergil knew and loved well. Still extant in them is one specially happy union — the marriage of land and water. For miles and miles along the roads and through the fields run long irrigation ditches carrying water, seldom slow-moving, almost never stagnant, usually in active motion to moisten the earth and feed the roots. At intersections near every farm the long channels of water branch off into the fields.

South Korean farms are still irrigated in almost exactly this way. Now depending on the time of year, those irrigation channels might be gushing, or they might be dry. My walks are mostly in the fall when harvesting is more important than irrigation, so as you can imagine, the channels are often either dry or at a very low level. But the passage Dr. Gilleland quotes is an almost exact description of what I see in the countryside when I'm walking through Korea's expansive farmland and I've never seen this evoked so beautifully in words.