Driving through the Midwest
I drove to St. Louis last week to visit my cousin. It takes about nine hours, give or take. The drive goes through Iowa and then into Missouri. It's a two highway drive. I-29 is the Iowa highway. Mostly, I have found the Iowa section of the highway pretty dull. It's flat, lots of farms, and extremely windy. This makes the driving a little tense, since it's not unusual to see cars that have been pushed off the road by wind. The drive from Sioux City to Omaha is along the same I-29 route. It takes 90 minutes, and is perhaps the most boring drive in the entire world. This explains why I don't drive to Omaha very often. It's difficult to keep my eyes open on that drive.
This time, though, I wasn't bored at all. That's because I was watching the hawks. This dull section of highway seems to be the happy home of many, many species of raptors. It's ideal for them. The birds perch atop telephone polls and scan the fields for prey. Their view is unobstructed by trees; there just aren't that many trees around here. It's practically hawk-eye heaven. I have fondness for birds of prey. If I were born a princess, I would have had a falcon-- heck, a whole mews. I have seen a Golden Eagle take wing and catch something on the ground and then fly off. There is no way to watch something like that and not be impressed with the beauty of that dance. So as I drove through Iowa on my way to St. Louis, I watched the hawks.
The other highway is I-70 and the Missouri section is actually very pretty. Hilly and green, pastoral compared to the brownness of the Iowa plains. I saw a herd of elk, fenced in, but grazing happily along I-70. The interesting part were the turtles. I saw a bump in the road, and ended up passing over it. When I looked back it, I saw it was a turtle, a big one, lumbering across the highway. Then I noticed another one on the side of the road, and then another. Must have been turtle mating season or something. They were all headed across the highway, in the same direction. I must have seen a dozen or more. Kept me occupied. Counting turtles.
I don't think I will ever think this part of the world is as beautiful as places that are nearer and dearer to my heart. I will say that there is beauty here. It's not a beauty I'm comfortable with yet. The openness, the starkness, the big sky have their place. The hawks truly are beautiful, as are the horses. Even the rolls of hay, and the fields, have their own brand of beauty. I wonder what someone born and raised here in Iowa would think of the mountains and forests of New Hampshire. Would it take time for the Iowan to see the beauty?
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Driving through the Midwest
Posted by S.D.S at 10:52 AM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
I love hawks. Ever since I found out that there are hawks where I lived, I was fascinated. All along, I thought they were only in another part of the country - because I had never seen one among the Robins and Blue Jays in my back yard.
Now... I see them everywhere I go. My eyes have been opened to them.
Same thing with the landscape. I used to hate winter. I still have no love affair with it. But, I've discovered what there is to see in it.
Used to be I thought of winter as the "dead zone". Everything dies or hibernates then. True as that might be, there is something beyond the living for this biologist-based person to enjoy. In college I studied geology and geography. This really opened my eyes to another part of the world.
Now, in the winter, I enjoy looking at the shapes of hillsides and rocky outcrops. I enjoy the shapes of the barren trees against the color of the blue sky. I see the browns and the grays instead of the greens of the warmer seasons. It's different, but not bad.
Perception... (but that's the subject of your next essay)
Post a Comment