Rocky Ford lies low and wide in the Arkansas Valley, where the fields run out to a horizon that goes peach-colored before the sun is all the way up. Through the growing months we mow, trim and edge, keeping a yard in even bands while the melon ground around town turns its deepest green. In winter the same hands take up snow: plowing the driveway, clearing the walk, opening the way out to the road while the valley is still blue with cold. Plains storms here come in sideways and leave their drifts wherever the wind decides, so we read the sky as closely as the calendar. Done right, none of it announces itself — a place simply looks like someone has been there.