When I left Iowa for a job in the Southwest, I never imagined that within a year I would be homesick for cornfields -- a strange thought even after 40 years. Of course, it wasn’t just cornfields I was missing.

“Home” evokes different meanings and different settings. The specific geographic location where we keep our stuff is “home”. We can call home broader geographic areas where we feel comfortable and “at home” in. In that sense, “home” for me is the state of Iowa, particularly the rural areas similar to the farming area where I grew up. 

Landscapes have their own rhythm; Iowa’s is created by rolling hills interrupted by frequent farmsteads, wind turbines, grain elevators, and water towers marking small towns. Fences, power lines, and crops disappear over the horizon in both directions while the sky is often filled with massive thunderheads. All of which create a rhythm that makes Iowa feel like home to me and as Irish Novelist Cecilia Ahern wrote, “Home isn’t a place. It’s a feeling.”