Reflections on living in Iowa

I often talk to my students about where they are from, how they came to Wartburg and if they’ve come from even further away. My own journey has taken me deeper into the Midwest than I imagined I’d ever go, to a place I’d never considered, much less traveled.

Only a 12-hour drive from my home state of Michigan, my home in Iowa sometimes feels as far away as the land of Oz. 

Iowa is a place where vanity feels foolish and unnecessary, stripped away by the ongoing current of the wind. The wind here is different than anywhere else I’ve ever been: it wraps around my whole body, like water.

This is a place where I have learned a new respect for rivers, for these rivers are not the narrow streams of northern Michigan, covered with tiny, soft stones, the water clear and clean, the fish visible under the glass surface.

Iowa rivers are yawning, muddy, wide, moiling—the bottom is impossible to see, and the contents are always under suspicion.

These rivers, like all rivers, defy control, seeping and sometimes tumbling into swamps, farm fields and basements. Within a week they can transform a corn field into a lake attracting white cranes. Their power, like Iowa’s beauty, is both subtle and humbling.

I moved here two years ago after living in Michigan my entire life. I wasn’t prepared to be embraced by the open spaces, waved to by strangers who also pause and talk to me.

I wasn’t prepared to find myself planting trees, roses and sweet potatoes, something I’d never done before in Michigan.

I wasn’t prepared to find a strong community of small farms whose farmers were part of a movement to counteract agri-business with local and organic produce, dairy and meat.

I wasn’t prepared for the calm, the sanity, the quiet joy of watching the trajectory of a red-tailed hawk trailing figure eights in a clear, sub-zero sky.

I wasn’t prepared for the discovery of a familiar dead-pan, ironic outlook that seamlessly weaves into Iowans’ self-deprecating humor and quiet strength.

What I found here is what Terry Tempest Williams described as a place of rest and safety, a place to at last find my voice, now far away from the din of other versions of the person I’ve tried to become and the person I’ve tried to deny. This landscape forces me to confront myself, because it denies nothing.

As I run for distance on the sand-colored, Iowa country roads surrounding Waverly and Waterloo, I am enfolded by this frank, gentle emptiness. The cloudless sky seems to crash down on the slightly curved landscape.

Here there is nowhere to hide; this place shakes loose a new honesty and directness in me. The trees are few and far between, so when I see one, I study it carefully. Wherever I run, the wind runs with me, shaping my spirit as surely as it shapes the corn and the prairie grass.

Dust and sweat create a new layer of skin. There is no shelter from the sun. I marvel at how I could ever have imagined that I would find such peace in this fiercely indifferent place.

I respect the way it keeps others away simply by being what it is. It has no pretensions to be anything else. There is no façade.

I have heard people joke that states like Iowa (and Michigan, for that matter) aren’t worth passing through because there is “nothing” there.

The landscape will receive anyone who comes through, but it doesn’t care if you’re here or not. Iowa is indeed the “middle” of the country, the “fly-over” zone that is largely forgotten by most people. It is a way-station, certainly not supposed to be a destination.

I realize that Iowa’s “middle-ness” is precisely what feels right to me. I marvel at living in a place where no one else wants to go, but where everyone I talk to here loves to be.

I belong here because this is where I’ve always been, inside—at the crossroads, the “fly-over” zone.

Places of quiet, even seeming desolation and ruin have drawn me, called to me. Here there is sweet, complicated paradox laid bare: unceasing mystery and revelation exist together.

As I run, I watch for a hawk couple that I’ve seen lately, hanging around two telephone poles on one of the roads.

When they call out, I first think of seagulls and when I see them circling the sky, I first think of buzzards.

The difference is that the hawks simply surrender their bodies to the wind; their bodies are strong and patient, and it looks like they’re swimming in the sky.

The couple draws spirals around each other and I crane my neck as I run past, trying to keep up with them—and just as quickly I lose them, as the wind’s current tugs them higher.

I look ahead of me and feel the dizzying sensation of time seeming to stand still, as the landscape drifts lazily past.

Looking  back over my shoulder, I can see that I’ve already gone a mile, and it feels like I’ve hardly moved. My feet planted on the earth, I know that I am home.