Is this Iowa?

No, this is heaven, Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams would say.

I thought I’d probably like Iowa, Iowa City anyway, but I didn’t know I was going to love it! A friend and I met there to take a writing course (two, in her case) at the Iowa Writer’s Group Summer Writing Festival. It was awesome. We stayed with her daughter (poet, double MFA, and co-director of the summer program) and her boyfriend (poet and teacher). The accomodations? A house that belongs to the state poet laureate (not in residence at the time). I know little about him but liked the love poems he had framed in the guest room. We didn’t get much down time, didn’t cook once, and raced off to bed as soon as we got in every evening so there wasn’t even time for sitting around and talking.

We did learn a lot. Without going into details, our class staged a coup after just two hours on the first day, and everything went up hill from there. We all walked out on the second day with our own blogs and our heads full of ideas. That was quite a feat for some of us, who’d not spent much time looking at blogs, much less reading them, who until shortly before the class may have heard the word, but hadn’t a clue what it meant. So, voila, as they say. This is the result!


But, getting back to Iowa. That—is now a goal. Growing up in the Midwest (but adulthooding in Pennsylvania), the open space was such a relief. I try to explain to people when they visit Michigan with me, or when I recently returned from the plains, what it’s like to see around, to not have your vision blocked in by buildings, strip malls, billboards, or even lovely tree-lined roads and hills. What freedom it is to see nothing but fields that end in the curve of the earth, roads that go on straight for days, miles upon miles of layers and layers of clouds. The first time a former boyfriend flew into Michigan with me he couldn’t get over the long, straight roads that occasionally crossed others but never deviated from their straightness as far as the eye could see from a plane!



Back on the ground, you can drive for miles before going through a small town, where even the youngest people can remember when the only stop light or sign was erected. If you blinked and missed it, you find yourself passing a farm way off in the distance or on the very verge, depending on when the road was put in, or a roadside stand with homemade signs for homemade pies, homegrown fruits and vegetables, real canned goods, and crazy mixed bunches of flowers that you never would squish into one vase at home but can’t resist buying even though it will make you sneeze once it’s trapped in the house (not to mention the resident bugs that inevitably will decide to explore their new home).

Living on the east coast, you are surrounded by really old stone buildings and homes. The Midwest has buildings almost as old, but the architecture and the feel are totally different. I love the big, square brick or wood-sided houses with big long porches, cupolas, peaked roofs (called ruffs), and odd-sized windows. The towns are adorable, with Victorian and Georgian style homes all mixed in. I love the towns, with their old Western movie style storefronts, public parks, quaint little shops, crooked frost- and tree-root-heaved sidewalks, holiday decorations and parades, and children playing OUTSIDE. I love how the farmhouses are surrounded by a copse of shady trees, barely visible from the road, while the barns and silos loom large, shiny, and proud.

In the Midwest, freight trains go on forever. I mean, forget curfews if you’re on the wrong side of the tracks (my parents will appreciate that pun!). After spending years—ok, months—waiting in a car for stopped or slow moving trains, I once was trapped by one in Kalamazoo right near the engine, which had just barely closed off the road. While I sat there fuming about how I was going to be late for work, listening to the incessant clanging of the crossing bells, I watched the engineer climb down the steps, cross the tracks, and walk into a 7-11. I kid you not! I was too incredulous to be mad after that! Of course if you were with a boyfriend, he’d shut the engine off and we’d steam up the windows while we were waiting for the train to moan and squeal and jolt itself back into slow motion as inexplicably as it groaned to a labored, indefinite stop.




It’s interesting in the Midwest how towns are often quite hilly. The center of everything—banks, food stores, gas stations, pharmacies, party stores (you have to be from the Midwest to know what that is, don’t you?)—often seems to be on the only high, curvy, and interesting, ground around. I’m sure there is some historical explanation that has to do with flooding or goes back to our European heritage where castles and walled villages were built on hills because of the vantage point factor. There was time, of course, when Midwesterners had to defend themselves against the Indians from whom they stole the land, or the Confederate soldiers from the South, or whatever.

Anyway, I can’t wait to get back to Iowa, and all the surrounding states, with time to explore. I just dipped my toe in this time, but there’s a cannonball into the back roads and cities alike in my future. I need time to see what plants grow, bugs crawl, fish swim, birds fly, and dreams accumulate next trip.


The photos in this post were taken by me from either a speeding car or landing airplane. Please do not duplicate or use in any manner.