Tag: travel

Meanders and Malchow Mounds of the Mississippi

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You have to spend time out there. There’s no way to shortcut it. You can’t let it sit there indoors within your mind sized box. You have to give yourself to it fully and let the compass spin wild. You have to walk the land to understand the way land is shaped. If you are never on a river, or in a lake, in a wilderness way, you won’t know why the hills are where they are. Everything you see is telling you about what already happened. But you have to slow down enough to listen.

I have spent a lot of time in the last two weeks with the Mississippi River. Along the Iowa side. I can’t explain my connection to the land or how I know things without knowing them. When I first spotted the ridge far off the right as I headed south I thought…no, it can’t be. But it ran for miles. How wide could an older version of this river have been? I headed towards the ridge, which technically was an ancient river bluff…it was miles and miles away from the Mississippi River. Only in 2026 I am looking at something so changed that it’s nearly impossible to accept that the river has meandered that far from its present course. But I swear I could see the water right up against the rocks, the way it was however many thousands of years ago. The ancient peoples here, between 400 BC and 400 AD built mounds. Nearly all of them right along waterways. Most of the major river systems in what is now called Iowa had conical and linear mounds from this culture. And then some in the shapes of creatures as at Effigy Mounds.

Today I spent time at Malchow Mounds. It’s 3.5 miles from the River and up on a bluff that at one time was just above the river. I climbed the steep hill to the top from the flat valley below marveling that the might river once saw fit to have been all the way over here. And once on the top, among the mounds, I kept imagining what it was like to have the water just there below the hill. And what was it like when it went away towards the east. How many times has the River meandered?

In the image below I have drawn a measurement line to indicate the flat valley extent from bluff to bluff on each sides of the river at this exact point. This gives the river about 10 miles of meander space in which to change course over the ages.

You can see on the east and west sides the green lines the run north and south. These are ancient river bluffs.

Here below is an example of the way the river meanders. Unfortunately these famous “Fisk” maps only exist for the lower Mississippi River Valley. Man…I sure wish he had made them for the Upper Valley where Iowa is. But take a look at these meanders. Each color represents a different course that the Mississippi has taken over time.

This is the Mississippi River along the Louisiana and Arkansas border. If you draw a straight line from Eudora on the West to the far East meander…you have a meander range of 17 miles.

I sat up there on the sides of the Malchow Mounds thinking about time. The river. The stars. The people that walked the earth before me. Deep time to when the river didn’t exist and the land here was covered with a shallow sea. I thought about meteors that left craters, like the one in Decorah. It’s rare that you get to be alongside something as enduring as a river like the Mississippi. And to view it while sitting in the midst of human made constructs that have somehow survived since about 400 BC…it’s all really humbling. It’s also really healing. If you get caught up solely in what is happening right now, in the madness of human affairs only, you literally suffer from the loss of the long view. It’s a paradox though. When we view things like cancer in Iowa, the loss of the native land surface from 97% of what is now called Iowa due to human will for commerce…through the lens of time, then we should be knocked over by how much damage modernists have done. The technology and ignorance for consequences that we carry are literally killing us now. And on the other side of the paradox, the amount of time that modernists have had their way with the land and environment is nothing. It’s barely a blip. When I sat on the new spring grass next to the Malchow Mounds as the chill April wind gusted…and as I fidgeted with 3 different cameras filming for the movie about Iowa…I kept telling myself to slow down. Just slow it down. What does it even mean to be in a hurry when in the presence of so many larger forces. I am just a small thing, trying to make sense out of a big story. And I never will tell the whole story. No one can. I can only be privy to a particular way of looking at history. But what I am certain of, is that with this movie, a deep history of how the land has been shaped, even before settlers came, is key to understanding our present conditions. It’s not what I expected to be doing. But it’s where the land has led me and so there it is. #TheIowaPrairieDocumentaryProject

Brief Update

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I am in that phase of a project where everything IS the project. Here is a brief stream of consciousness writing about what it’s like to work on the Iowa Prairie Documentary Project…for about 10 minutes.

I keep seeing the yellow summer airplane and a wet cloud of fungicide soaking a woman and her son. The pilot hit the button before he was over the correct corn field. No apologies. But someone did say “that stuff is harmless”. Then come the 18 wheelers later on in the season. The work crew is there. Before it can be believed by old timers they load the corn that’s planted corner to corner and off they go. The “farmer” hires everyone while he enjoys life in California. He doesn’t even know the slope of his land in Iowa. He hasn’t walked it in years or maybe ever. He’s a clean shoed landlord with renters. He doesn’t know a “side by side” from a golf cart. He doesn’t care that the valley creek got straight as a shotgun in 1880. He doesn’t care that it’s loaded with his paid for carcinogenic nitrates and tons of other chemicals and that it’s pointed downstream.

He doesn’t think about the water that runs through drainage tiles like it’s in a hurry to push the cancer rates even higher. He just wants tall corn.

After a windy day in Iowa City, a scientist tested dust off of a leaf and found signs of Atrazine. Look it up. It’s in the air you are breathing, miles and miles away from the nearest field.

The corn and soybean seeds that go into the Iowa soil are not so much seeds as they are an amalgamation. Multiple layers, one after the other, manmade chemicals douse and soak every single seed. These chemicals, individually are known to be harmful to life. Who has done the testing for what happens when they are all combined and ingested? Nobody.

The guy that wants to put CO2 pipelines all over the state, is already producing the same product in another country. It would mean that he is trying to convince everyone in Iowa that there is really hot market for what he is peddling…while he is creating the competition for the same market. It’s like an arms race and he can sell to both sides. He wins either way. Iowans will lose either way.

Soon, I am going to interview someone in Iowa who has over 15 members of his family with cancer. If I read another report that claims our high cancer rates are due to eating bacon or drinking beer or “lifestyle choices”….instead of what humans are clearly doing to the air and water – I am going to lose my damn mind.

I think about Oak trees all day long. About their branches and what the droop means. About the placement and the soil they grown in. On my daily walks I now have Oak trees that I say hello to.

I think about land and ownership and indigenous people and journal entries from 1835 drift in and out like sun behind clouds. I think about starting the movie with the very first fur traders to come here and how that’s when it all started to change, that’s the point of origin for water we can’t trust and cancer and an entire state with wilderness areas small enough to walk through in less than an hour.

I am reading journal entries that predate the Beaver Wars. Jesuits were a special kind of stupid. Let me show you a Bible while I am plotting your destruction?

I think about people who are trying to do the right thing by the land and I think you can recognize that it is the right thing, when they ask for no reward in return for its doing. That’s the rarest thing of all. And the opposite of that, is how we got into this whole damn mess to begin with.

Human beings taking and wanting more than they need, quite simply, is the reason Iowa is the USA’s most environmentally degraded state. How do I say all this in a ninety minute movie?

Data Centers. That has to be talked about.
The poisoned Plum Creek watershed, just southwest of the Cedar Rapids airport…Biosolids mixed with arsenic and mercury have been applied to the land repeatedly, who is stopping them? Beef from that land is raised and sold to Hyvee. I doubt anyone is doing testing on that meat. 

Every time I work on a project I run into an absolute truth: I realize I can’t tell the full truth. There are things that can’t be mentioned. There are people that know some pretty serious things and they tell them to me but they won’t on the record. Because if they do, they will lose their access to knowing what is really going on, which is worse than not knowing.

I think about the way Big Ag companies support research related to prairie restoration, to prairie plants research. They funnel greenwashing PR money at big nonprofits that you would recognize the names of. If you ever wonder why these conservation orgs don’t come out with hard hitting pieces about what’s going on behind the curtains of Bayer Crop Science and other large companies—well there’s no need to wonder. But I think this green muzzle is worth knowing about.

I think about sitting in a car parked outside of a pig CAFO last week and even with the engine running and wind blowing, I could hear what could only be described as screaming. There’s a difference between a pig oinking or squealing…and a half insane creature screaming from a life of drugged misery. And now I have heard that difference.

The company that is guilty of the largest chemical spill in Iowa’s history now has a lawsuit being levied against them. This is a good thing. How can I center this effort in the film?

Every thing happening with prairie restoration, restorative agriculture, the reversal (however small and mighty it may yet be) of the corn and soybean industry has been based on long learned efforts of so many Iowans that started this work decades ago. I have been so fortunate to have spent time with many of them already.

Wisdom, only seems to show up in well aged packages. Time makes a difference.

The Iowa Prairie Documentary Project

A Fallow Field is…

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So today was interesting. Make that HOT and interesting. I think it was about 95 in Fairfield Iowa today when I left there in the mid afternoon. Ugh lol. I mark today as the first official day of serious research for the Iowa Prairie Documentary Project. I drove the one hour and change from my home in Iowa City to Fairfield and marveled at the endless rows of corn. I mean…I can’t say enough about how much land here is ruled by corn. It’s really bonkers to me to see all this land under the dominion of a single crop…a practice that any farmer knows breaks the land. I’m not a farmer and even I know it. You can simply look out at any non farmed piece of Earth and see that nature has a different set of rules, a different kind of design. Diversity is nature’s design because it’s what works. And here we are, trying to force dollars out of the ground against all logic, using more and more fertilizer like amphetamines to resurrect the tired and overworked soil.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is this: “A Fallow Field Is A Crime Against The Land” I thought it was a direct quote from Steinbeck’s book “Grapes of Wrath”, but it seems it is not. I can’t find where I discovered that exact quote, but what it meant to me was quite poignant. For me it meant (please note the past tense usage) that the land was the victim. The land was suffering, because it wasn’t under the command of what people wanted. It meant that not growing food is wrong. Not making the land productive is wrong. As a young person I strongly identified with this mandate…that it’s our right to put the land to our designs however we see fit. In my mind, we didn’t have to justify it. That began to drastically change when I became an outdoorsy hippie in my twenties.

Now, to me, a monoculture field is a type of crime against the land. And a fallow field is a chance at recovery. A fallow field never to be plowed again is a chance at redemption, to undo the harm that’s been done. Not in all cases mind you, but compared to King Corn, yes.

I am 53 years old ya’ll…and if you had told me even 2 years ago that I’d be writing this down this post in an Amish town’s (Kalona, IA) coffee house, after returning from Fairfield where I toured 2 different restored prairies…I would have quite simply said “but I will never live in the midwest, so that’s impossible”

Today was wild though. I learned so so much about what is happening with restored prairie. I met with folks, who between the 7 of them, possess over 100 years of combined prairie restoration know how. I got my first glimpse of actual restored prairie, got to walk barefoot along the firebreak pathways…oh…and now I know what a firebreak is. It would be too cumbersome to recount everything that I gleaned from these folks. And I won’t have to, because at least one of them is going to tell us in her own words…I am returning next weekend; one of them has agreed to commit to an interview for the Iowa Prairie Documentary Project Podcast. And three of the others I met are pondering doing the same a little bit further down the road.

Stay tuned for that interview. And if you’d like to listen to Episode One, which is me talking about my motivations and influences that led to the beginning of this project, that was released yesterday. Currently I believe it’s only on the main Simplecast site…not quite filtered down to Spotify and the others yet. Click on the pic to listen.

And finally here’s two pics I took today…

King Corn on the left in a field outside of Fairfield, Iowa.
chamaecrista fasciculata…the Partridge Pea that I spotted along the way.

Winding Up…for the Prairie!

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Yep, I know I have a lot going on. My hands are full already with releasing weekly episodes of my podcast, lining up screenings for a movie about how Russia is ravaging Kherson, Ukraine with drone warfare…and just you know…working for a living and trying to keep my head above all the challenging things happening around the world right now. 

But…ever since I arrived in Iowa, literally…I fell in love with the history of the prairie. I’ve also been learning a lot about the dismal water quality situation here. And more recently the cancer rates as it likely relates to agricultural practices. 
I
And so…I am just starting the process of creating a documentary series (podcast and film formats) about the history of Iowa’s prairies. I plan on focussing on the changes primarily from just before pre settlement to current circumstances, how those changes have impacted water quality, species, etc. I mean…that’s a wildly brief summary but it gives you an idea of where I am coming from. 

If you live in Iowa…
I am hoping to connect with people who might fit into some of the following categories:
1- interested in being recorded while talking about their knowledge of prairie flora and fauna…with a perspective on how things have changed over the last 175 years.
2- don’t want to be recorded but are happy to talk about it off the record. 
3- folks who can tell me where I should be filming to best capture existing prairie that never went under the plow
4-you know who I should talk to…if not you 

🙂

5-you have drone footage or photos that you think would help tell the story. 

If you are interested at all in helping, or asking me questions about the project, feel free to DM me. Forewarning: I am 53 years old and prone to actually talking on the phone as opposed to lots of messaging haha! 

Day 1-Iowa City

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I am always a bit self conscious when walking into a diner. I shouldn’t be. I am always in good company. Today, strung along the street side window are three men over the age of sixty.

Two of them are wearing beanie hats. One of them has the classic baseball cap. All of them hiding their bald heads from the chill or hiding the fact that they lost that hair long ago. I rebel, and remove my gray wool beanie, setting it down pointedly on the table. I haven’t had hair on top of my head since I was 25. Unfairness in the handsome department struck me early in life. 

It doesn’t work though. I still look just like them. For we are all the same. Alone, older and lonely looking. Oh…and all of us are wearing glasses in order to read the menu. Hello 53 years of age. I wasn’t planning on meeting you and being single still but here we are at the Bluebird Diner in Iowa City, Iowa. My theory is that you don’t really notice the older-lonely-beanie boys in diners early in the morning unless you are one of them.  I think we are invisible to most. I don’t like belonging to anything by virtue of default. This is my least favorite label. The lonely older guy sitting in the diner at 8 AM. The romanticism of sitting alone in diners wore off for me about 13 years ago. 

My favorite past is sitting across from me. They just walked in. My favorite of all time…the period of my life that brought out my best. It’s a 6-top. Four kids and all of them under the age of 5. Within minutes the three older ones have knives in their hands, they are shaking the salt shakers, there are napkins on the floor. There is squealing and laughing. The parents are calm but also taking a lot of deep breaths and looking at one another across the milieu-wan smiles. I only had two kids to their four, but it’s the best thing I ever did. 

That’s why I am here in Iowa City. My two kids, now 22 years old and 26 years old somehow both decided to move to this town in the last year. Then the requests for me to follow began late last year. And after I was done saying “but why did you have to move to Iowa City of all places”, I visited them for Christmas and actually found that I liked the place. And then came the plans to move here on my part, driven by many external forces, but all of my own design.

First of all, any parent who has adult children asking them to live nearby to them, must say yes. It’s an unwritten rule of life. If you have kids that enjoy your company enough to make this request, despite your uncountable mistakes as a parent…count yourself exceedingly fortunate and make haste to their location.

Secondly, I have “lived” in 123 places in the last four years. No. That’s not an exaggeration. I made a spreadsheet. I counted them up. And for the last 11 months I have been doing nothing but volunteering for things I believed in. I have been creating more than I have at any point in my life. I created a 19 episode podcast and directed a feature length movie.To keep my costs low so that I could focus on this work I decided to do housesitting and petsitting up and down the east coast of the USA. It’s unpaid. But you get a dog or cat to watch after and a free place to stay. Usually it’s a very nice place to be and in a very choice location. 

I have been, in a real sense, without a place to call home since August of 2019. I had some short stints in a rented place here or there…but for all the rest of that time I have either been taking care of my parents in their home, camping, staying with friends, at an Airbnb or doing the housesitting/petsitting thing. 

I haven’t had a home to rest within, in any real sense. And by this January, during my last scheduled petsitting gig on the shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington Vermont, I realized I couldn’t do this any longer. The free wheeling sense of adventure had evaporated. I got to the point where I was daydreaming about living in one town, having one job, and just being as stable and boring as humanly possible. 

And so, Iowa City made sense for a lot of reasons. 

I now live in a house built in the 1850’s. The ceiling in my room appears to be 15’ tall. The windows are about 12 feet tall and they have two layers of heavy wood paneling that folds to act as a solid curtain against the light and cold if need be. You can feel the history in the exposed floorboards with every delightfully creaky weary wooded step. Steam coaxes deep grumbles from the heater in the corner. The massive front door of the house probably weighs over 100 pounds and was shipped by horse and buggy, overland from a train station in Chicago in 1853. The streets out front bear the weight of cars on red bricks and the tires make an odd but pleasing squishy grubbly sound upon them. I can walk to town within minutes. 1800’s architecture and early 1900’s edifice are everywhere. One thing I gleaned from staying in 123 different places was a made list of “things I want to have when I finally stop moving around”. Because I made a study of how people who live in one place…lived. The main thing I noted is that most places don’t really have a sense of community if they don’t have walkability. If you can’t walk to a friend’s home, to where things are happening, to where you might take a bite or get a cuppa or read a book…that community is always lacking something. So top of my list was to get a place in a town where I could walk to the town center and where the town would have something worth walking to. To my surprise, Iowa City=A+ on that grading chart.

I also made note of the absurd housing costs everywhere I went. There was not one place where the locals didn’t trot out the now tired tale “after the pandemic housing prices are through the roof! People can’t find anywhere to live here now and even if they can find it, it’s too expensive!” When I found out how little my kids were paying for rent in Iowa City I really thought it was a typo. Or if not, it meant that Iowa City must simply be a truly undesirable place to live. Nope. Turns out it’s just mysteriously affordable. And local wages somehow are not far behind the cost of living here. 

To wit…my plan was to settle in a lovely small Vermont town called Warren. I was just there last week saying goodbye to that postcard village. And a friend there told me that just recently a 200 sq foot bedroom, in a home shared with others, was going for $2000 a month. As I said, a number of reasons drove me to Iowa City. At some points, while I was living rent and mortgage free for most of the last 4 years, I have felt like an economic refugee. Fleeing the high cost of housing as a single person and knowing that if I rejoined the housing fray that my earnings couldn’t possibly land me in a home that I would want to live in. When you are single, it’s just way different. Your options for comfort are exactly cut in half, unless you are wealthy…which I am most certainly not. I am not Ken Burns. I have found a place to rent that I enjoy, in a lovely historic part of town…and it’s not expensive. It’s easy.

So, here I am. Iowa City. Day 1. There aren’t words with enough letters or enough lines on a page to explain my relief at knowing that I am living here. No longer moving. No longer searching. Just finally living in one place.

Work? Honestly…who knows? Though I planned on doing a very normal, very plain kind of job…alas. I am who I am. I have applied for those jobs and been passed over or turned them down. Currently I am feeling like I’d love to do something historical about Iowa City. Maps. Visual retrospectives. Maybe see if the city wants to throw some money into something interesting that visitors might want to use or see. I want to dust off my old cameras and take some still images. Maybe get back into some architectural photography? In short…I am feeling like freelancing is what I will end up doing again. And that’s sounding okay.

What I am currently doing however is:

-ghostwriter and business contact for a book about Ukraine and the work of one frontline humanitarian aid worker from the USA. We are seeking a publisher for the book! (screenshot for the book website that is still in development phase below)

-copyediting my prescriptive self help memoir about my time as a caregiver for my mother as she died from cancer and dementia during the peak of the pandemic. Seeking the traditional publishing route for this one too. 

-self publishing a poetry book drawing from my last 15 years of writing poetry.

-possibly developing a podcast based on my movie 400 Feet Down.