As my gray hairs have multiplied (I kid you not. I am 32 with a freaking STREAK of gray hair. Damn genetics...) and the housing developments have stretched further and further into the farms of my youth, I have felt myself changing my tune...
How is it that I never noticed the simple beauty of a cornfield? The gentle rolls, the perfect lines? That I never felt the wonder at the speed with which the tiny seedlings become towering stalks?
Why is it that I never realized the peace I could feel, driving between field after field of rust and golden crops? That the solitary trees finding root near the winding creeks were not lonely but majestic and strong?
This land is beautiful. This land is rich. I am so grateful to have been raised in America's Heartland. Grateful that I know this area. Really know it.
My shoulders sag as I realize my homeland is rapidly changing. Living in an area that is growing as quickly as the Chicago suburbs impresses upon me just how much of our farmland is disappearing. I'm saddened to think that my own children, as adults, may make the same drive I made tonight, only to be met with nothing but houses and strip malls. That they won't even remember the long, winding strips of pot-holed roads. Or listening to thousands of crickets singing into the night after the fireflies have finished lighting the bean fields...
Seriously, folks. Quit moving to Illinois. You can still stalk me from afar, I promise.
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20 comments:
Hi, Nat here. I read, but very rarely comment anymore, but this got me out of lurkdom. I feel the same way about AZ (boring, nothing to offer!), until I saw a cornfield! I had no idea that the next major street down was a big time cornfield hub until I decided to take a different route one day. So yeah, cornfields are cooool.
Seriously though, in my quest to get out of my state I have considered IL. I do have family there so it's not totally out of the blue. Is it OK if I move there someday?
I must come if only to hear the thousands of crickets and see the fireflies before they dwindle to only a few:-(
Sadly, it's the same here. Except where either the state has stepped in or the Amish have bought it up and won't ever (usually) let it go.
It's the same thing here too. James and I sound like a couple of grandparents as we drive out to Costco - now in the middle of town when it used to be in the middle of nowhere - and say, "I can remember when this was nothing but fields and farmland." Lord help us if we ever add the phrase "kids these days" to that sentence.
Ditto, ditto, ditto! Just the other day I said to the husband, as we passed the corner gas station & 2 new banks on the corner... "remember when this was nothing but trees (all of 13 years ago!)?" It's very sad indeed!
My husband & I vacationed last year in Sheridan Illinois, totally middle of nowhere. We'd spent hours just driving around the countryside (in the maze of cornfields at varying stages of harvest). We considered going again this year, but the place was booked up... guess we're not the only ones that like cornfields. :)
Yes, I agree that cornfields are beautiful, but it wasn't until I moved to Southern Illinois where there aren't many around that I missed them. I really like the greenness of the bean fields too, so rich and dark green. Lovely.
Great post!
This is sooooo flippin' off topic [forgive me, just this once] but I just now realized that in your picture you both have milk mustaches. How dense am I?
Now I'm totally wondering where you live! I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and I have to say even within a place that was pure suburbia, it has gotten more and more built up to the point that I sometimes get all turned around when I visit my parents because I don't recognize where I am.
Oh, Tracy, I feel you! I could have written the exact same thing about MI.
This was so well written. You nostalgia and longing are palpable.
I attended classes at Northern Illinois and I was amazed by all the land, the corn (and the tornado I watched from a distance!). It was such a stark contrast to the classes I took at U of Chicago--the towering buildings, the traffic, the sheer number of people.
I have a whole new appreciation for corn . . . for land, nature, space.
(You sorta make me rethink my whole desire to move back to the city . . . ).
I know.
I visited my girlfriend in Aurora over the summer and was amazed at how much has changed since the last time I visited her in college. Wow.
I like corn fields. Makes for fun mazes in the fall.
Don't move to Arizona either. We're out of water!!
I couldn't see the picture but I'll check back on Sunday to see if I can see it then.
I hear you about this post. Isn't it weird how we change our minds about what we want around us as we get older. I would rather have corn, or anything for that matter, than parking lots and strip malls or housing developments!
BTW- I'm gray too! I'm very thankful for Loreal!!
Have a great weekend!!
Hugs!!
We drove through the heartland on our way from NY to CA, six years ago. It was beautiful and I hope that my kids can make the same drive someday and spend hours traveling up and down those corn fields.
I grew up in a small town in Kansas that has changed little since I left 16 years ago. Every time I go home to visit my family (I now live in Baltimore), I am awed by the beauty of the pastoral landscape. I miss that openness.
I was born and raised in Calgary but left when I was 18. I hadn't been back in the fall for years until last year. And I was BLOWN AWAY by the colors and sheer grandeur of that place in fall. So sad I wasn't able to appreciate it all those years I lived there!
Oh, I feel the same way. Indiana is a lot of cornfields, but a lot of character and beauty.
Steph
I left my home state New York when I joined the Army. I now live in Louisiana. Louisiana is SO much better in that New York (upstate) lacks culture and things to do.
Wow! My first visit to this site, very nice! Bought back memories of a road trip we took our kids on 2 yrs ago. Nice description! You can read about our trip, if you'd like at our site maviefolle.com (walleyworld vacation). I look forward to coming back and reading your posts!
ok ok i won't move to Illinois. I don't even know what a flatlander is... so I just don't think i'd be prepared. Now can you tell people to stop moving to New York City because there is way too many people here too!
Ugh. It makes me so sad to think of the beautiful land we have left (that is not developed into strip malls and car store) and how it soon will no longer be.
To think that one day in order to see "land" we'll likely have to go to a national park.
I live in a big city, went to college in a small town, and can understand how awful it is to see these beautiful, vast, places being ruined by housing developments. Just in my time in college, so many of the amazing little towns were destroyed by Wal Mart and other big companies, turning them into more boring American sprawl.
It's happening everywhere. So sad.
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