IOWA - Portrait of the Land

A LOOK AT THE LAND

Essay and photo by Drake Hokanson

Perhaps more than any other state, Iowa is land; great, rolling reaches of it, blunt as a workboot, fine-textured as Japanese paper. Georgia has its piedmont, Arizona its rock desert, but Iowa has - Iowa is - land. Everything that grows on it gratefully pushes roots into its dark soil; everything that humans build on it casts small shadows across its great presence. Land is to Iowa as water is to the sea, the one essential thing.

I crossed Iowa by small plane recently, from the southwest corner to northeast corner; Lincoln, Nebraska, to La Crosse, Wisconsin. I flew low, about 3,000 feet above the soil, because I wanted to see this wide state pass close beneath. On a warm day from so low you can sometimes smell the earth. But on this June day it had rained; the fields were quiet, and I suspected the cafes full of farmers on short furlough. Woodbine to Auburn, Badger to Clear Lake, Orchard to Lime Springs, I had the privilege of a rare diagonal, an angled route across the grain of Iowa's window-screen grid of section-line roads.

First were the arrow-point Loess Hills that rose from the broad Missouri floodplain; the hills expanded outward to become the sides of a close valley: the Boyer River valley, thinly wooded as if trees had only recently found it. Then the river faded into the uplands, the broad turtle-back of the Des Moines Lobe, where melting ice left broad lands that cried out for twelve-row corn planters.

After a stop in Clear Lake for fuel, I watched those long, straight rivers - the Shell Rock, the Cedar, the Wapsipinicon - bear off to the southeast, like arrows in a quiver, pointing toward the great river out of sight past the Earth's curve. Mile by mile I watched corn and roads, corn and farmsteads, corn and soybeans, towns and land pass beneath. I looked for the ragged little square of Hayden Prairie near Lime Springs, but missed it in the expanse.

There is nothing bold about Iowa's land - except its extent. Its charms are quiet ones, requiring much of the observer. You must look with an eye for the gentle horizon line, the subtle shadings of soil, the exclamation points of trees and distant grain elevators. Iowa is the land, and it is enough.

As you admire Iowa's fertile fields, tidy homes, busy cities, and network of roads, consider the links that connect our land, our people, and our history. Sometimes eloquently, sometimes more subtly, today's images also speak of our past.

At our State Capitol, Iowans may stand in awe of the golden dome, chat with their citizen legislators, or feel the energy of people at work in the seat of state government. But when you climb "the hill," try to sense another era as well. Shiver at the frigid breezes off the glacier that piled the dirt and stones beneath your feet. Listen for the roar of meltwater churning down the Des Moines and Raccoon River valleys off to the south. Visualize cool forests of spruce and fir, with open meadows fringing boggy pools left by ice that finally is melting after centuries of glacial cold.

Imagine a dozen human figures, clad in animal skins, stalking through the trees, silently approaching a huge mastodon browsing at the edge of a clearing. The great animal with long tusks, muscular trunk, and shaggy hide means food, as well as danger, to these nomads. If they can kill the beast with their flint-tipped lances, they and their band will eat well for many weeks.

Meet the first Iowans. These traveling hunters discovered this land 13,000 years ago. The lawns and parking lots and office buildings that now make up our Statehouse complex once could have been their hunting territory - a boreal landscape chilled by remnants of retreating glaciers.

The ancient people must have shivered through bitter winters that would have made modern Iowa Januaries seem balmy in comparison. The brief summers brought some warmth, along with the perils of floodwaters. Runoff from the melting glaciers turned the rivers into muddy, pounding torrents filled with tumbling boulders and swirling gravel. Ponder that on a June day when you glide along a placid Iowa stream in your canoe.

Or picture if you can, another place, another era. A herd of shaggy bison is grazing on a hill above a paved highway filled with a rush of traffic. Plodding and chewing, dust swirling around their hooves, the animals stretch out across the grasslands, even beyond the rows of livestock confinement buildings in the distance. If the bison ghosts fade away, count the concrete grain elevators dotting the horizon - and contemplate their unlikely link to a native prairie or forest preserve. Remember that each site stores treasures grown from our rich earth.

Focus your thoughts on an image of neat rows of corn and soybeans planted in the flat, geometric fields of north-central Iowa. But go to those farmlands after a spring rain, when countless shallow ponds and wet swales linger on the black soil. Then envision those potholes bristling with rushes and pond weeds, dappled by the shade of uncounted flocks of ducks and geese and shorebirds circling overhead. No wonder early settlers named nearby towns Mallard, Plover, and Curlew.

To experience those wetlands, seek out a friendly farmer's undrained marsh or a state-owned wildlife area. Put on waders or old shoes, then slog through the cattails into the soft mud of the shallows, listening for the buzz of yellow-headed blackbirds and the honks of protesting geese. Use all your senses. Feel the glare of the sun, taste your own perspiration, smell the bubbles of gas stirred up from the decaying vegetation.

Prefer the comfort of an automobile? Watch from your window for stalks of compass plant or clumps of big bluestem waving alongside the road. Think of making that journey across a 28-million-acre expanse of Iowa prairie, bumping along with all your worldly possessions in a canvas-topped wagon.

Do you take Interstate 80 for granted? Be thankful for the modern, raised roadbed across the broad Skunk River floodplain east of Des Moines. How would you like to have crossed those Skunk River bottoms 150 years ago, when muck and prairie cord grass and mosquitoes seemed to swallow up the covered wagons? Listen, above the drone of diesel engines and humming tires, for the shouts of phantom teamsters urging their oxen through the mud. East Coast magazines warned westbound travelers about that dreaded quagmire they would face in Iowa. Some parties took days to traverse the valley that we now cross in minutes.

In autumn, thousands of people make the pilgrimage to northeast Iowa to savor the spectacle of the changing leaf colors. At Effigy Mounds National Monument, some tourists watch barges and bass anglers on the Mississippi River, while they listen to the calliope music from an excursion boat. But other visitors may feel the centuries-old spirit of Indian families sculpting a bear effigy from the soil of a blufftop, honoring the earth that sustains all life.

The simplest scene, like dust billowing behind a car on a gravel road, could remind us of our heritage. The rock on that road was crushed from limestone formed by sediment deposited in the shallow seas that covered Iowa 300 to 500 million years ago. A morning walk along a road can bring many rewards: exercise, a few cents' worth of aluminum beverage cans, and fossils that record ancient geological history.

Even modern farmsteads have roots in our past. Did you ever notice how a new house and steel machine shed perch on a knoll - most likely on the same site where the farm's first owners built their cabin? The slight rise above the surrounding prairie caught the cooling summer breeze and dried out fastest after the wet spring. Or in the hill country of eastern Iowa, see the reflection of the settlers in the homesites they chose. A house on the ridge commanded a view of the neighbors or approaching travelers. The cabin tucked in a sheltered valley brought seclusion and protection from the winter winds. The farmer along the riverbank feared drought more than floods.

Now, of course, the census takers label nearly two-thirds of us "urban" because we live in cities of 2,500 or more. And fewer than 9 percent of Iowans are considered farmers. Yet we can't overlook our rural heritage, our land heritage. Many of us have farmers in the family tree or close friends in agribusiness, or we simply may enjoy a ride in the country.

Transplanted to cities and towns, we can't break the habits of our rural ancestry. As you mow your lawn to match the neat carpets maintained by your neighbors, recall the prairie settlers who kept the grass short around their log cabins to reduce the hazards of wildfires and rattlesnakes. We also plant trees, just like those early farmers who tried to temper the prairie gales and the blazing sun with windbreaks and shady groves that still dot the countryside.

We've forged our union with the land diligently, over the decades. Indian farmers first tilled small fields and gardens, growing corn and other crops. And the state's first Euro-American settlers, hardy German and Norwegian and Dutch and Scots-Irish immigrants, came mostly for the fertile soil. Those pioneers - the Millers, the Olsons, the Van Gundys, the McKinleys - broke the prairie sod and turned it into working land. They and the tireless farmers who followed took advantage of the rich, deep soils and favorable climate to grow grain, cattle, and hogs to feed their families and the world. Their sweat and spirit transformed the wild, bountiful prairies of Iowa into a marvel of agricultural production. Daily, we see the fruits of their labor in our grain handling and processing industries, in our farm equipment manufacturers, in our feed and seed and chemical businesses, and in our section-line roads dividing square croplands.

But most Iowans cling to another legacy as well. Instinctively, we're drawn to the shade of a bur oak, a gnarled veteran that survived long-ago prairie fires only to be caught up in the ceaseless battle between woodland and prairie. We pile bird seed on our windowsills, reaching out to the creatures whose homes and habitat we may have disrupted in our attempt to harness the land. Picnickers and swimmers and boaters and anglers crowd close to our precious lakes and rivers. We prize our woodland trees - some for their beauty, some for their lumber, some for the solitude we find beneath their canopies. With childlike wonder, we delight in the grace of a monarch butterfly, the intricacy of a spiderweb, the promise of a northbound flock of geese, the aroma of a wild rose, and the antics of a fox squirrel.

We name our rivers, streets, subdivisions, shopping malls, truck stops, sports teams, and even pesticides for the plants and animals that make up our natural and cultural heritage. Some of us fish or hunt or trap because we feel a tie to ancestors who lived off the land. To some, it feels good to till a garden or grow flowers or plant trees.

More than 100 centuries, 10,000-plus years of time and cultural transition, separate us from the mastodon hunters. To be sure, the land has changed, and we, in turn, have left our indelible stamp upon the land. No, we cannot relive the times or recreate the places those prehistoric humans knew. Yet, in the ways of the Earth, their footprints have barely faded. In geologic time, we're only a heartbeat removed from people whose Iowa roots we share. We live on the same land, gaze over the same valleys, and bond to the same rich earth.

As you read this story of Iowa's land, reflect on those connections to the natural world, to the larger circle of life, and to the deeper rhythms of the Earth. Take time to get better acquainted with our land community and its many citizens - be they plant, animal, human, rock, soil, air, or water.

Each citizen is a thread in the fabric of the canvas on which our land's portrait is painted. But only we, as human beings, can choose the tints and textures and brush-strokes to bring that portrait to life. For our children's sake, we must not take those choices lightly.



When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world. - John Muir		Tracks preserved in dried mud mark a raccoon's foray in Winneshiek County. Photos by Lowell Washburn.