![\"owa](\"http:\/\/blogs.kzoo.edu\/bmills\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/owa-Landscape.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn early April, I returned to my home state just as it was sloughing off its last big snowfall. \u00a0(By the end of the trip, the drifts were gone from county ditches; and, down the hill from my parent’s home, East Okoboji Lake had transformed from a rough table of pocked ice to waves and whitecaps.) \u00a0The landscape reminded me of how important it is to my writing. \u00a0In fact, I think we drove by a raised mound of earth, the last remnant of a farm place that I wrote of in my book: “Driving to and from [my wife’s] farm, I passed [an old home]: a first generation homestead that had taken on the color of tree trunks and, at sunrise and sunset, collected the unbroken light shooting over corn tassels.”<\/p>\n
At Pomeroy and Pocahontas libraries, I spent a morning and afternoon reading from An Archaeology of Yearning. \u00a0The Pomeroy Library was across the street from the community building, the site of my wedding reception. \u00a0In the audience, I met (and re-met) folks who still recalled my wife’s, Mary’s, math homework and other childhood accomplishments. \u00a0And, sitting in rows like genealogical lines from our own Genesis, Harold and Pat, Vickie, Debbie, Aunt Rose, Herb and Elaine, Steve, Mary…People, who, I suppose, we’re more beholden to than begat from.<\/p>\n
Looking over the pictures, I think of all that gets unsaid and remember the way the field opens up again and again to the routines of both work and witnessing. \u00a0There is a strength in the daily stroll that we call quiet patience. \u00a0Sometimes, though, we have to put words to things. \u00a0It felt good to carry a book back to this place, to let it get tilled into the rows of listeners.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n