I grew up in a small town, a farming community. Tractors and combines roll through downtown, and although there is a minor sense of impatience from the following drivers, there is, too, a feeling of acceptance and recognition of the necessary evil. My elementary, middle, and high school were in one connected building, conveniently placed quite literally in the middle of a cornfield. The lunch destination of choice was the small shop attached to a milk refinery, which sold candy bars and homemade ice cream. It was not uncommon for students to show up to class smelling of cows or pigs, as they had no time to shower after chores. The community lived and breathed football in the fall, wrestling in the winter, and track in the spring.
My small town – Strawberry Point, home of the “world’s largest strawberry!” – is located in the corner of one of the poorest counties in Iowa. Although my parents are teachers, a job that in most respects pays horribly, we were relatively affluent. I knew I would go to college, a private college if I wished, and get out of my poor little community. I have an older friend – Summer – who did that very thing: she graduated, went to Drake, studied abroad, traveled the world, earned her master’s degree. And yet she returned, after all of her worldly experiences, to small-town Iowa.
There is a quaintness, a quietness, a tranquility in my little corner that I have yet to experience anywhere else. Friends from big cities may scoff, but I love my town. I love that I can walk the streets in the dark, with nobody around but the lightning bugs and streetlamps. I love that raccoons steal from our birdfeeder, that deer nibble on my mother’s carefully tended flowers, that baby owlets are taught to hunt right outside my kitchen window.
The summer after my first year of college, on a balmy, cloudless, moonless night, Summer and I clambered into her dad’s beat-up pickup, rolled down the windows, and drove out to her family’s farm. We didn’t stop at the driveway; we drove on a grassy path that meandered through their cornfield. We stopped, climbed into the bed of the truck, and looked at the stars. It seems cliché, but we did it nonetheless. We didn’t talk. We just watched.
As I lay in a dirty truck bed smelling cow shit and hay, crickets chirped merrily and lightning bugs flickered in a mirror reflection of the ocean of stars above me. The Milky Way sprinkled and weaved its lazy, river way across the sky, punctuated by Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, and the reliable North Star. Occasionally, a meteor, a falling star, would flash, and we made silent wishes.
There are no stars in cities, no grass between your toes, no heady aroma of fresh dirt, only the grime of dust and smog. There is an uncomfortable disconnect from nature. My communion with nature is essential to my continuing relationship with my home, my planet, my Earth. If I don’t experience it – if I don’t stargaze – I have lost my connection with myself.
I am traveling to South Africa soon, and although this means leaving the comfortable security of my strawberry town, I realized something recently. The stars I see here won’t be in South Africa. In the southern hemisphere, I’ll be sleeping under a completely new set of stars. The country is different, new, but I can’t wait to walk out into the African savannah, lay down on familiar dirt, familiar grass, and stargaze.