Being an Iowan

What does it mean to be an Iowan?

Members of The Gazette Company's We Create Here initiative recently asked Iowans to answer that question in an essay of 500 or fewer words.

The answers they received were as varied as the people who call this state home. Here's one example. To read more, visit www.wecreatehere.net.

Chuck Kelsey

Fertile childhood, fertile land

Life on an Iowa farm in the 50s and 60s invariably intersected with the lane that led from the main road up to the house.

For some, that might have been a groomed driveway or a grassy path etched with tire tracks. For me, the lane was a narrow gravel road that wound from the mailbox, with its red, perpetually dusty flag, between a raised yard and a vine-tangled hedge interspersed with mulberry trees that, each year, relinquished their fruit upon old sheets carefully lain beneath. The lane then curved round the silent windmill to place me at a crossroad affording a daily choice between my parent's house and my paternal grandparent's house. Both were my home.

The lane was traversed daily, in all kinds of weather, as my sisters and I explored the fastest track for our sled or the most dangerous way to coast a bike. We splashed in the mud puddles that formed in the ruts and trudged to the school bus in the early morning.

Reflecting back on how intimately I came to know the lane of my childhood in North Central Iowa I realize that it was the foundation of my later life's journey. And, as Dorothy discovered on her sojourn along the Yellow Brick Road, no matter where I might currently reside, I never really left it. I am still finding puddles that need to be stepped in, I am still trying to find the best path for my sled to travel in, and I am continually testing the most exciting and enjoyable ways to ride what life offers.

The Iowa farm I grew up on was a mystical, even holy place. It was a cornucopia overflowing with delights that could satisfy the appetite of any child. From the dark old growth timber, to the harsh dust of lonely gravel, one could breathe in the life around, and the fragrances would suggest the feast that God had prepared for the moment.

Witness the muskiness of freshly turned soil in the late spring. Or alfalfa, cut the day before, transforming its very character in the morning dew. One could feel the sudden cooling of nostrils as an unseen thunderstorm teased the growth from a stalk of corn. In the winter, the greasy, warm, wool smell of sheep would mingle with bovine sounds as the dried summer was consumed in the shelter of the barn - all of us oblivious to the snowstorm raging outside.

At any point in the year, the flavors of God's creation filled the senses. Even the not-so-subtle fermenting silage and ankle-deep manure suggested a life of plenty. With the plethora of sensations came the rituals of existence. The seasons of life and death that revolved in a never ending circle were always marked with rituals involving sustenance.

To be an Iowan means experiencing a spiritual connection to the fertile land and a fertile childhood.

l Chuck Kelsey, of Coralville, is the organizing pastor of Journey United Church of Christ.