If I am ever homesick, it is in September. The mist beings to come off the rivers in Iowa, holding the areas in a soft gauze of mystery. In the fields, the grasshoppers make a slow, restful sounds, as these know the weather is changing and they will die. Birds stay close in the small clumps of empty choke-cherry bushes, and in the small copses of oak on the edge of the hot fields. The heat varies from day to day, and becomes a strange combination of comfort, yet the prophet of cold nights to come.
Egrets and ducks vie for room in the backwaters and small rivers. The ash, burr oaks,red and white oaks, elms, hickories, red and silver maples all change, coming to their brightest by the last week of September into the first ten days of October. Fall festivals start this coming weekend and go into October. The ales are judged at some of these, and later, in October, the pumpkins.
Sometimes, we have proper Indian Summer in the third week of September, when the temperature goes up temporarily and kids squirm in their school rooms. Bees and butterflies slowly disappear. The nights grow quieter, as the tree frogs and crickets stop their nightly songs. One sees the pheasants and quail alongside the roads, as the corn is harvested, ending up in kitchens, being shucked by nimble hands or cut off the cob for seed corn and stacked away; the fields left brown and flat, reaching out to the horizon as far as the eye can see. Deer begin to travel through the cut fields and one must watch for them on the old roads. Six or seven at a time, these noble animals re-claim the land they left during planting and growth of the tall corn. Their young stare into the mist and wait for the elder stags and does. The deer population has gotten lower in recent years. If one commutes into the country every day in the car, twilight is the most dangerous time for deer. One must drive carefully.
Things slow down right before, and of course, after the harvesting. Hunting regulations are printed yearly and complicated. For some game, the season does not begin until September 14th or October 6th. One must plan and keep tabs of the rules and which animals may be hunted when. The same is true for the migratory birds. September is a time for thinking about what to hunt and when. The rules on fishing are so complicated one almost needs a translator to find one's way through the state guidelines. There are some fishing seasons for some fish. I grew up on fresh game and fish. There is nothing like eating a trout which has just been caught.
Some of the vegetables and fruits begin to be harvested in July, but some not until late September. The harvest season is different for seed corn or ornamental corn, for raspberries or for bunching greens. Winter squash is winter, and not fall, squash. Nuts are brought inside. Soybeans should be harvested by October 20th or so, depending on the weather. The air is full of soybean dust and those with allergies stay inside during and after harvest.
The burst of energy at harvest time defies imagination. Bins are filled, bails dot the landscape, cheeses laid up, pickling done, apples collected in bushels towards the end of the month into October, and accounts begin to be settled.
Pigs and cattle find their way through the stubble. Then, the rains come.
The university year still follows the rural time-table, with the first break happening at real harvest time. This year, there are many tragedies in Iowa. The drought has tripled the price of meat and bread. The fields emaciated. The crop is ruined and a depression looms. This year is different.
I miss Iowa in September. It is less manic than in the summer months, more purposeful and secure, and less hostile than the winter. There was always an air of expectancy, like the entire landscape was waiting for something to happen. September in Iowa is a gentle, resolute giant moving quickly, then slowly, towards late autumn.
But, I am afraid for Iowans, who traditionally have been independent thinkers. I am afraid that the glut of bloated government and the fuzzy lines of ethically remote phrases have been like siren songs calling the materialistic heart instead of the independent heart. I am afraid that relativism, which is antithetical to nature and natural law, so obvious when works with ones' hands in rural area, has destroyed discernment. I sincerely hope not.
All these photos were taken in Iowa, mostly by farmers.
