CORNered

September is settling into the cornfields. The relentless sun is fading stalks from green to golden brown. 

The sun seems to say, “don’t forget about me,” as days gradually get shorter. She blazes with a sort of hellfire these days. We are forced to contend with her. She doesn’t pay much attention to the sweat on our brows. 

The farmers have the harvest itch. The ranchers say bring on the rain for thirsty pastures. More than half the nation is still suffering from drought. How easy it is to forget that when we get a few inches in our own backyard. 

The backyard is a safe place, but the world is a far bigger place. I often think how I would like to follow a single kernel of commodity corn to its final destination. Like trying to track down a grain of sand in an ocean. 

We’re all in this together like grains of sand. They say the earth cannot sustain a growing global population. When I was born in 1977 there were around 4.2 billion people. Today, there are around 8.3 billion. I beg to differ that we can’t make it all together somehow. What the world needs now is love, sweet love, sharing … and learning from one another. 

We need to “feed the world” they say. “Awe corn shucks,” we’re not feeding the world though. Heck, we import 90 percent of our food in Nebraska research states. The same is true for other supposed ag strongholds, even the “I” states like Iowa. They import much of the actual food they eat too. 

So, I keep thinking along as corn soldiers line my drive home, staring at me, seeming to know their time is coming. I stop at a bend in the country road and admire the wild sunflowers making a sort of yellow comet arching around the base of the ditch. 

We sure need to study those areas we don’t farm, untouched by machines. See what thrives there without humans, their technology, and irrigation. See what roots run even deeper there, far deeper than the tentacles of the Anglo Saxon Homesteaders that preceded us.

I always anticipate the corn being cut down and look forward to peering out upon the great expanse of opportunity. I honestly prefer to imagine myself flying above the temporary golden sea on a magic carpet ride somewhere else the most. I have “flown” out of here a time or two and written about it a time or two as well. 

But not even my thousands, maybe millions of words have made much of a dent in these cornfields where #2 yellow dent corn has us kind of CORNered around here. I am back closer to home trying something new though, and I’m determined to make the “comfortable a bit uncomfortable” you might say. It’s just there are people starving in our country, right down some of these country roads even. Starving for good nutrition, but even more so hungry to have a more meaningful life. The land can bring that meaning to more people. Seeking to understand each other can too. 

There are things I want to see saved here and the world over: the water, air, soil, sunshine, animals, plants, and people. We Americans have a knack for taking things too far. We’re really still in our infancy when it comes to cosmic time. Corn has its place in the world, but “King Corn” can’t reign forever. There’s going to have to be some give and take. We’re not into kings of any sort anyway around here are we? Let’s read the Magna Carta again for goodness sakes. Better yet, let’s travel back to a time before titles and deeds. Before bureaucrats. Before Roman calendars and clocks. When time and freedom were woven into life naturally and guided by seasons, stars, sunrises, and sunsets.

It’s good to give more than we take. The land and water cries out for us to remember what it means to survive and truly thrive and be fully alive as humans. We don’t need “Artificial Intelligence” to robotically tell us what that means. We need to come together as human neighbors the world over and remember what that means. Remember how it feels to feel. 

Yes, September is settling into the cornfields. The hot sun is fading stalks from green to golden brown. Life is pressing wrinkles of time into our faces too. We’re just here for a New York minute in the great expanse of time and space it seems. 

There are only so many harvests left in this life. Maybe we can focus on what yields more than bushels around here. Maybe the harvest should be measured by what it truly yields for all people. Changing just a 1/2 acre of our farms would change the course of life for countless neighbors. 

Another harvest is coming, followed by a vast clean slate of soil to imagine something even better growing upon. When our ancestors first settled here, one of the first structures they built were schools. They valued growing food for themselves and their neighbors. They valued lifelong learning. 

Maybe we stopped really learning for a while. Maybe we stopped fully taking into consideration the plight of our neighbors near and far too. Looking in the mirror here and seeing me missing the big point too. We can now. That’s the sincere hope I have for the Heartland. We’re all the hope for the Heartland. Time to get to work, together, before our harvests are through.