Having spent my life in a buzzing metropolis, driving through the Midwest states was a hypnotic and sobering experience. Anyone who has seen the breadbasket of America will know what I’m talking about. Fields. Billions of acres of crops covering the land in waves of undulating leaves; the tamed wilderness organized into rows, blocks, and circles, continuing on for hours and hours and days and days. That’s one of the strangest things about driving through the Midwest. The endless ocean of cornfields, birthed by man’s labors seem to go on without end, but with no signs of those who created it. A car here, a small house there, a windmill, a rotting barn; it’s as if some great civilization built it eons ago and then died out, leaving the living remains of their creations for you to drive past and wonder at. That’s how I found myself on the evening of the last day in July, driving my red sedan along a veritable tunnel of a road cut across the cornfields. No broad highway for me; rather, I had chosen a graveled detour which I had been promised led back to the interstate. The last few exhausting days had seen me driving non-stop across the country, but today, as the sun peaked in the sky and began its free fall back into the earth, the end of my trip drew near. Rest, relaxation, and who the fuck knows maybe even fun lay at my feet; the only thing separating me from my goal was a mile more of gravel road and a few insignificant minutes on the freeway.
Unfortunately, my car was having a little trouble navigating the tiny country road. The assholes at the gas station had promised a worn but perfectly passable route, but a few miles in it became increasingly evident that neither description fit this sorry excuse for a road. Still, the anxiety didn’t really sink in until the gravel path degenerated into a dusty path and then into mere ruts on the ground. As the weeds growing between the tire tracks began to hit the underside of my car, I briefly grappled with the idea of turning around and taking the more traditional, albeit longer, paved route. But soon, that bitch, stubbornness, got her way and I plowed on forwards against the rising weeds and deepening dark…