Corn is Scary

Went for a bike ride with my 7-year old daughter, Alma, to the Minimum Maintence Road-- Travel at Your Own Risk- about 1.5 miles from our house on the prairie. We were riding up this dirt trail when she yelled to "STOP" and got off her bike and said "mom-- we're going into that corn." We're surrounded by corn on all sides-- it is high enough over our heads that we can't see over it to where it ends.

**Aside** This is something I would never have thought to do. This, frankly, is the adventure in having kids-- they come up with great ideas I would not have on my own.

So- what the heck- we start walking through the corn-- against the rows. We are parting the rows of corn and stomping through. It is a beautiful blisteringly bright afternoon on the now crispy drying prairie (I use the word prairie liberally because it is really mostly corn and soybeans). I realize that I am JUMPY and AFRAID. Can I impress upon you that there are NO PEOPLE HERE? The entire county has 5,000 people and most of them are in the small towns and Ortonville. But I think-- if I were homeless or a criminal no one would find me in this corn. You can see about 3 feet in front and behind you and about 10 feet down each row. The world is very small in the middle of a corn field. When our dog-- Happy-- comes bursting through the corn I literally JUMP. This happens a few times. [disclaimer-- I had had a diet coke and a few espressos recently]

I realize that there are all these scary movie images of corn fields. Remember Signs?-- good movie recommend it. There is something inherently spooky about being enclosed in corn where you could be (and probably are) only a few feet from terrible danger and fright yet only suspect it!

We keep moving through the field of corn-- I figure if we keep cutting perpendicular to the corn rows we have to come out the other side-- right? Well we do come bursting out of the corn and right onto the edge of a praire wetland complex. Boom-- right there wild roses and rose hips, prairie grasses, rushes around the water. Dang-- again I'm just so grateful to be here. So grateful to have a kid who makes the sidetrip the main purpose of the journey.

Mike, my husband, says "hold that feeling through November."