Heather Goes a Long Way to the Theatre 04

Alright, this is frustrating. I have so many beautiful photos from today, but I am unable to share them with you tonight because I am at my Aunt Maryjoe's farmhouse in Iowa using their painfully slow country computer. We're an hour outside Omaha, Nebraska and the internet just isn't hopping out here. Oh well, I promise I'll post the photos of today at my earliest convenience.
Today our trip across the United States took us all the way through Nebraska, the home of Arbor Day, or so we were informed by the welcome sign crossing the border. Strange that a state with what I, as an Oregonian, would call relatively few trees created a holiday dedicated to celebrating trees.
Well, they may not have pine forests, but they do have thousands of miles of corn fields. Corn, corn, corn, stretching as far as you can see. Often we'd see a big old red barn out in a field, but again, our view of it was obstructed by corn. Sometimes we'd see a break in the crops and a lone dirt road would stretch out with absolutely nothing on it until it either disapeared over a rolling hill or simply faded into the horizon.
Something that I've found fascinating about this area is the overwhelming amount of grasshoppers. When walking along the edge of a field they all jump away just as I put my foot down as though I was splashing water as I stepped. Their hum and buzz is deafening. I've found that if I stand quietly for a few moments I can hear the chirping and whispering of trillions of grasshoppers that inhabit hundreds of miles of field and farm. It is a unique and lovely sound. I am convinced I have never heard anything like it.
Upon stopping at one rest area, Dad and I became very preoccupied with catching and photographing the grasshoppers (I'll have to share the photos with you at a later date). I was fascinated with the different kinds and sizes I could catch. We were, in fact, so interested in our endeavor that I began to wonder how we would explain to our relatives in Iowa that we were delayed because we stopped to take pictures of bugs.
Anyway, now we are at Maryjoe's country house in Iowa, and we're taking a break from driving tomorrow to stay here and visit with a bunch of the relatives on my father's side of the family. My father's family, by the way, grew up in a fairly rural area of Michigan. There were seven children in the household, and I am excited to say that after twenty-two years of life, today after meeting Maryjoe and tomorrow after meeting Uncle John, I will finally have met all six of Dad's siblings.
I think that Iowa is breathtakingly beautiful. So far there are just as many farms and corn crops as in Nebraska, but the landscape is a little more varied as upon reaching Omaha, the terrain became far more hilly than flat. It feels strange to be so centralized in the United States. I feel as though I am the farthest away I could be from any ocean. I am landlocked.
One more happy thing I'll mention before I sign off, Dad and I crossed the Rocky mountains yesterday, if you'll remember. That means lots of different animal species that never got to the west coast. I was taking a walk this evening in a corn field, and began to see several of a specific little creature that is a favorite of mine. Fireflies. Silently lighting up and then quickly fading again as though people were standing among the corn stalks lighting matches and blowing them out over and over again. Wonderful.
I'll post pictures as soon as I can. Goodnight, from middle America.