Rolling Hills Of Iowa

Monday, August 11, leaving Walcott and driving the remainder of our deadhead I watched corn and soybean fields as we passed.

I thought about the phrase " Rolling Hills" and the Iowa landscape, how it looked to me. All 290+ miles on Interstate 80 is uphill and down hill. The landscape undulates like ocean waves. The crops and fields on both sides of the highway resemble a heavy sea with waves cresting 20 to 30 feet. Troughs between the waves, or the lower parts of the fields, look in some places like whirlpool eddies. There are some fields high on the crest with other waves breaking below the surface. Joe tells me these are known as "Terrace" farming. The slope of the hill is not leveled out to one long curve. For rain runoff and snow melt the terraces keep the water from eroding the soil and being washed to the bottom of the hill. Corn fields are high on the hill at the crest, the terrace is below the highest level then another stretch of land has corn with a terrace at the end then soybean fields continue the contour down the rest of the hill and up the next one. The crops continue to alternate between corn and soybeans broken up only by small towns and hamlets.

In a month or more all the verdant green of these crops will be replaced by yellows and browns as the crops mature and are harvested. Come late fall and early winter this landscape will look forlorn and almost naked.

The swells, undulations, and eddies will not be as noticeable. The fields will look like dirt and weeds. Not as fanciful as they look now covered in lush greens.

Everything changes.

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