Thursday, March 17, 2011

It Could Be Michigan, But It's Not

Along Hwy 30 east of Mt. Vernon

Have you ever had one of those moments when there's something is different but you can't quite put your finger on it? This happened to me when I was driving to Mt. Vernon on Wednesday. It's a cute small town about 15 miles east of Cedar Rapids. I drove along Hwy 30, a scenic road that passes through farmland and along one stretch you can glimpse through the trees the Cedar River as it winds its way south toward the Iowa, toward the Mississippi. Along Hwy 30 are barns and fences and wooded copses in the cornfields.

It's late winter and everything is in shades of brown, from a pale gold to a dark taupey shade. But it was so beautiful — the shades and textures of corn stubble, grasses, thistles, bare branches. And there was a big blue sky.

"This is so lovely," I kept saying to myself.

And yet it felt strange, as though I had been dropped down into a foreign place. It's Iowa, so how different can an Iowa cornfield be from one in Michigan? Not so much, not really. Still, something was different.
And then it hit me: It's the light. Sunlight. Lots of it. And a big sky.

In late winter/early spring, you don't see a lot of blue skies. It's damp and cloudy. Coming to Iowa, we have simply emerged from under the permacloud of West Michigan.

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