Just outside Garland, where Branched Oak Road meets Ridge Road, a lone elm once stood on a rise above the prairie. To most passersby, it was simply a tree on a hill – neither the biggest nor the tallest. To Dillon Hardinger, it was home in view.

“I’ve known this tree since I was a kid,” he said. “Over time, it became a little landmark in my life.” Hardinger grew up down the road, riding past it on the school bus each day. He later moved to Lincoln and built a career in social media and photography with Restore Muscle Cars, but the tree remained fixed in his memory.

He watched it through rain, snow, storms and clear days in every season – dusted white in winter, budding green in spring, casting a lone shadow across summer grass and turning russet in fall. Nebraska wind bent its branches into a shape he could recognize at a glance. “It always stood its ground on that old hill,” he said.

Cattle grazed the surrounding hills, clipping the grass short. The open ground only made the elm more distinct, framed by prairie, shrubs and scattered trees in the Bohemian Alps. On summer nights, far from city lights, Hardinger often pointed his camera toward the hill and let the tree hold the center of the frame.

His favorite image is a Milky Way shot. “I love how it connects the tree to time and the universe,” he said. “But there’s nothing like a simple black-and-white shot. Stripped of color, the composition speaks for itself – the shape, the balance, the presence.”

Then, in the summer of 2025, it was gone. The tree had been cut down, and the hill Hardinger had photographed for years stood bare. The first time he came down the gravel road after it disappeared, the emptiness hit hard.

For Hardinger, and for others who knew the spot, it had become more than an elm on a rise. It marked the turn toward home, the familiar shape on the horizon, the thing you expected to still be there. “Slow down. Appreciate nature and life while you can. It’s good for the soul,” he said.

Photography gave him a way to hold on to it. His pictures preserve the tree as it stood – through starry nights, changing seasons and the years before the hill went bare.

“Maybe in 100 or 200 years, someone will see my photos and think, ‘That guy captured something special about his time,’ ” he said. “Maybe by then, the house will be gone and a new tree will have grown there. But thanks to photography, this one won’t be forgotten.”