Fields of Dreams

Field corn is taller than my head right now. As I drove through Iowa and Eastern Nebraska I was surrounded by corn for miles and miles and miles. The rolling hills and tall corn give the field the illusion of buoyancy. It was as if I could float on top of the corn. I have often fantasized about surfing over a corn field. But of course I would cut myself on the leaves and crash to the muddy rows between. It cannot hold you up like a lake, but it looks like a lake.

In the middle of the corn fields of Northeast Iowa is one of my favorite spots in the world - Lake Okoboji. I feel a deep pull to the lake - perhaps the moon or gravity, but instead it is as my daughter tells me, geology.

"These are glacier lakes," she told me. "They don't have any mud!"

The kids gleefully played and swam in the clear water. We roasted sweet corn and ate grilled chicken in the park. We jumped off the diving dock about 80 bajillion times. We went to the amusement park. We ate ice cream and watched the sun set.

I told the kids that when I sell my screenplay that we will buy a cabin and live on the lake. The kids laughed and picked out what "cabin" we will own. The cabins are nicer than the house that we live in.

We drove home through the hills with our car seeming to part the waves of corn as if we are a speedboat.

"Can we go back, mom?"

"Absolutely," I say.