Lately, whether I’ve been traveling for work or for pleasure, I’ve set out with a specific objective to achieve. It was a lovely change a few weeks ago to set out with the only purpose of spending time with an old friend.
I met this friend through work when we both lived in the city, but during the pandemic she moved back to the farm where she grew up. It was wonderful spending the weekend with her catching up, and seeing through her eyes a landscape that’s quite foreign to me.
Yes, this is a part of the country that I’ve unironically referred to as “flyover country”. To be fair to me, I do fly over it not infrequently during my travels, but to be fair to it, that shorthand doesn’t do justice to either the land or the people who live there, and I’ve always known it.
I was expecting the vistas of cultivated fields, but I wasn’t expecting the rolling hills, the stands of old bur oaks, or the bald eagle nesting in a nearby oak tree. (no photo– I didn’t want to disturb the nest). From my travels in the West, I’m used to seeing fields with shaped around extensive irrigation, but here fields were growing from ditch to ditch, relying on rain for water.
It was fun peppering my friend with questions about how she sees the place she grew up. Of course she sees the changes since her childhood– I see the effects of time and change nowhere more acutely than in my own home town– but she also knows what’s growing in that field (yes, I know what corn looks like, but I can’t identify 3″ tall soybeans at 100 yards), how crops are stored (unless you’re storing silage, it’s a bin, not a silo), and what kind of bird was that (a trumpeter swan– I’d never seen one before, despite a childhood love of E. B. White’s book.)
It was a lovely weekend, and I’m so grateful to my friend for her hospitality in showing me her world as well as her friendship over the years!