Windmills Of My Mind

Linda Burton posting from Des Moines, Iowa – A thunderclap knocked me out of bed; a 9 on a scale of 10. Lincoln had stormed me in; Lincoln was storming me out. But it rapidly moved east; by the time I dressed it was starting to clear. The cats were the fourth load; the sun came out and the humidity came up; I turned the cooler on and set the GPS for Des Moines. A mile to the freeway; I-80 East was all I had to remember today. Cross the Platte River, edge around Omaha, cross the Missouri River, and the Journey entered its 35^th state. The minute I crossed the line the landscape changed. I entered the Loess Hills of western Iowa, a unique land formation adjacent to the Missouri River Valley. Though deposits of “loess” are found around the world, nowhere else but in China are areas of windblown silt higher than in Iowa. The Loess Hills encompasses over 640,000 acres of land; 10,000 acres are designated “Loess Hills National Natural Landmark.” People flock to visit the outstanding prairie-and-forest-covered bluffs and the archaeologically rich hills; in 2008 the State Archaeologist recorded over 1,500 inventoried sites. I stopped at the Iowa Welcome Center about 20 miles in; a marker there told of historic Council Bluffs, so named for an 1804 meeting of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with the Otoe Tribe. The Missouri and the Platte, so significant to explorers and settlers in the westward movement. Back on the road, bright green slopes began to fill my view, different from the farms I’d seen in Kansas and Nebraska. They were terraced farms; gentle contours edged with grasses in between the crops. And then, a truck whizzed by, hauling a giant blade. A blade for a wind turbine? Wind farms in Iowa? » read more