A Moment in the Heartland

As I'm back east, in the NYC home, and I decompress and process life on the left coast while running head first into a new semester here's a little meander from the land of corn.  Iowa, a week long stop before heading to the west coast for a month.

Not every trip is a great festival of excursions and all night fun.  Yet, even on the most remote trip the balance of life and art are what really make the locale.  As life goes, research and work took me to Iowa.  Yes, Iowa.  Upon leaving I got many a side eye wondering why I was off to a seemingly banal place in the American Heartland.  As one friend rather loudly noted, “You go everywhere! But why Iowa?!” Jesting aside, as I sometimes pondered my choice in archives, I packed my bag, headed to the airport, and set out to conquer a state unknown to me.  

Perhaps this is where I should provide you with a trite saying like “if you lower your expectations that the joy will increase.” Eh, that’s not what this is about at all.  I flew into Cedar Rapids, and then after some malarkey on a minor flight delay, a rental car company with the work ethic of a village idiot, and a cabbie who took me to the wrong hotel and then tried to rip me off I slept and then got my rental the next morning.  Then, since I couldn’t check into my hotel until late in the day, I saw little point in driving to Iowa City, storing my luggage, and then wandering about town.  Instead, I headed out ... out to Des Moines, as I would spend the week wandering Iowa City and its environs.  

Under a heat dome, I drove. While in Des Moines, I awed at the river crossing, saw the Raygun store, snickered about Des Moines being French for The Moines, and let my traveler soul reside.  The sunroof open, the music loud, I let that little rented Nissan go.  The roads on I80 aren’t too terribly difficult to navigate, and on occasion I used my trusty Google Maps.  Though, after Des Moines, and heading toward Iowa City again, I was intrigued by Pella that promised to be “A touch of Holland.” 

Oiy vey.  “A touch of Holland” was more like a story book missing its characters, as it was Sunday and the largely religious community was closed up for the day.  Though, I did stretch my legs and catch a few Pokémon in the village park.  Of course, there are a few jokes to be made that at times I saw more Pokémon than I saw people on the prairie . . . Yet, Iowa still has a core and a soul to be found.  

Those endless corn fields, that cover the state and I saw from Davenport to Des Moines, to Waterloo, to Grinnell, to Iowa City, to Riverside . . . those corn fields, that sunroof, some vitamin D from the open sunshine, and a few teas and bottles of water from the Casey’s General Store fueled me and my soul.  The music was certainly too loud, my singing was absolutely off key, and the sunroof made my hair a fright that I often forgot about and then caught glimpses of my frayed hair and pink skin laughing at how feral I had become.  In hindsight that might have been the cause of a few frazzled stares that Sunday afternoon. 

Among the Amana Colonies I tasted some sweet, sweet wines, wandered among some cute locales, shops, and art displays.  The colonies, once a religious safe hold, are now largely a tourist destination proclaiming a “handcrafted countryside.” They were a nice break from the corn, so to speak.  I did stop at Lily Lake and gaze at the American Lilies appearing to sprout out of air as they covered the lake in a blanket of sweet and mellow yellow hues.  The ducks came out, in groups, and marched along the pond’s edge in line in a solidary haze as of if to say “Onlooker stay there.  We know where you are as much as you know where we are.”

As I drove, and through much of the week worked all day in archives, and sought refuge at night I found the entire state largely rolls up the streets at 5pm.  In Middle America the nights were littered with crickets louder than a New York City subway car, and the days saw wide open fields of corn and open airy roads.  Iowa may have not been the dream getaway of, say, Paris, but it certainly served to buoy the soul.  Perhaps that is what the real lesson in those corn fields was . . . sometimes we just need to get away and feel our soul sing in the wind, let our eyes see endless sky and open road, and smell the sweet corn growing in the pasture.