to the point

The Love of Place

Yesterday, I believe I fell in love with Iowa.

This was an interesting experience for me, because, until yesterday, I kind of thought of myself as a one-geographical-love kind of girl. I love the desert. Period. I always have, I always will. I told my sister years ago that if I die suddenly I want her to take her horse, Jak, out on my favorite trail, my ashes in some sort of recyclable container, and tell him to do his favorite thing - run. When he's running, take the lid off the container, and let me blow away in the wind.

I've lived in Iowa for years now, and though I have learned to like it quite a bit here, I've never exactly felt my heart would break if I had to leave, forever.

But yesterday I took Steen out for a light ride. We walked along, just the two of us, between a corn-field and a pasture dotted with horses. The leaves are just starting to change and the light was soft and warm on everything. Steen was relaxed, I was relaxed. The breeze was cool on my face but my core warm inside by dirty orange barn-vest. And then it hit me - the thought, "I love this."

It is hard to imagine two more disparate tableau's than Arizona and Iowa, but as I rode and took in the scene yesterday, I found my adoration for white sand, barbed thorns, and crinkly underbrush moving over to make room for rolling hills, the rustle of wind in corn, and the soft thud of horse-hooves on grass.

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day

It seems one of the great injustices of life that during our childhood, when we are most likely to be greatly impressed by what we are exposed to, we have precious little control over the sorts of things we come into contact with. I, myself, will never say anything but that I had a positively magical childhood through which my two siblings and I waltzed largely unscathed by the sorts of concerns that touch most of the world. We grew up in sand and rock and cactus, limited in both our contact to the wider world and in our exposure to media.

Mainstream media, I can't help but feel retrospectively, makes pernicious use of the impressionability of young minds. When I was a child, I harbored a genuine belief that all human children needed to drink lots and lots of milk from cows simply to stay healthy. This belief came directly from the "Does a body good," milk campaign of the 80's. I can still hear the end notes of the jingle that accompanied a sequences of dancing children and cows ( suddenly bipedal, udders bared to the world), and the way that slogan was spoken in a quiet, cool voice as if as an afterthought. These images and sounds remain in my brain with perfect clarity, often unearthing themselves, unbidden, just because I happen to think about milk. It seems unfair, to say the least, that I should have to carry this inane, inaccurate view of the world with me, always, but that I cannot, in all truth, actually recall specifically the first time I rode a horse. Probably because my mother didn't think to provide me with a theme song and slogan to associate with the event, not knowing the heft that experience would lend to the rest of my life.

But a less pernicious association I can't get rid of also came from media exposure. When I was a kid we read a lot, watched a little TV, and listened to a fair number of stories on tape. In one of these mediums (yes, bizarrely I can't remember which) I encountered the story of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. I loved this story solely because of that word. Blustery. And the way the blustery wind took over everything else simply by virtue of its blusteriness. It was a new word to me, the first time I encountered the story. And a word that has stuck with me, since.

Now, on days like today, when it is chilly and I hear huge gusts of wind battering the outside of the house, that is what I think. Better stay inside, Pooh Bear, it's blustery out there.