Vivid Details

The Illinois plains were riddled with the spires and fires of the oil industry like some hostile, alien city. Refinery plants covered the soil in every direction. Above was a gray sky, the haze of the industry mixing with a sad troposphere. I pulled along with the cars, on down the road. Huge cylindrical tanks of the gasoline stood like sentries among networks of pipes and pyres, all of it set behind a high chain-link fence.

Figuring the way out, a way to escape finally from every last industrial remnant of the cities I'd thought were already left behind, was a convoluted labor. Streets meandered, waved and wound about without any obvious purpose. A couple outskirt towns passed by and, inevitably, from daily the westward push, every fragment of condensed civilization disappeared in the distance behind. Turning up ahead was the vast great stretch I'd been ready and set for mentally for days. Its first true pieces were there extrapolated before me.

The Midwest: that meager label we've given to such a tremendous expanse of domesticated prairie, a title too succinct and nondescript to accurately tell of any part of what it is beyond location. Contents and context, left by this name so obscured and undefined, leaves the actual idea of it open and empty, a space to be filled with a search and a discovery of intimacy with a place. A shallow and general impression of it can be gained easily enough from images of its endlessly repeating plants, all tucked away in columns and rows, but the specifics in between them keep more illusive. True understanding and appreciation of its details comes only from a simple desire to nakedly experience what beats through those hidden veins of our America's fertile cradle of a heart, the will to see the seeds of our society and how their deep and precious roots have grown. It is a vast land whose immensity lies in its breadth rather than a height and a climb. It is marginalized, all too often forgotten or ignored; the transition between the Eastern woods and Western dry. But that description, too, sells it short, defining it in relation to other things of only equal value, when it is something which is self-defined with a greatness of its own proclaimed in its every inch.

Now onset the far reaching ride through the land free of obstructions, filled only by open visibility to the long, flat circular horizon. A two-lane, sun faded, cracked up highway stretched out over the flat expanse, sided left and right with rank and file newborn corn sprouts, sucking fresh life from the sun who's pure face attended them maternally in her blue bonnet sky.

Every farm homestead was a consummate rural tableaux. Curving away from the county highway, wild grass grows in a thin margin between the two deep ruts, worn into packed dirt over the years by the truck which sits in front of a peeling, white garage. This maybe leans a bit to the left to match the barn which is propped up and fading into time in the far corner of the neatly mowed backyard. White lace curtains hang limp in the front window of the centerpiece white house. Its heavy wooden door (with an old brass knob in it that rattles just a little, but locks just fine) sits ajar in the heated day behind a loose screen to keep the houseflies out. A red tractor with tires just switched out for the new season and a baler hitched on back rests in front of the two squat grain silos at the house's west side. Inside them, a few tattered, stray corn ears remain from last year's harvest, hardened and dried through winter's freeze. The border fence of oaks and ashes bunches it all together and separates home from work - as best as possible, anyway.

At the evening end of another repeat day, my eyes searched about for camp, patiently at first, but with an earnestness that grew as the surrounding naked openness continued to hinder. For lack of cover, I couldn't find anywhere to settle and the light was dimming in the west. At the driveway of a house I stopped and looked around. A car and a truck sat resting before the garage. I pulled my bicycle halfway up the drive, laid it over to keep it visible from the doorway, and walked up to the house. When I came to the little porch and stairs I noticed two short, brown and black spotted gray dogs sleeping underneath it. The nearest to me awoke to the sound of my footsteps, blinked tiredly, then recognizing me, her little body began to erupt with violent barks. This startled her sister, who followed a similar progression into fitful barking. I quietly tried to talk them down and sooth them as they followed me around the house to the side door. I knocked on the metal frame of the screen. After a minute a man opened it up and, mostly ignoring the dogs, asked me what he could help me with.

I told him I was traveling a long distance and moved myself to the side so he could see my bike laying on its side in his driveway. “Normally I'd camp somewhere off in the woods, but in the Midwest, as you know, there's obviously not a lot of discrete places to do that. So I was wondering if it'd be possible for me to set up my tent somewhere in your yard for the night. I hadn't noticed that you had dogs, though,” I said as they continued to bark at my feet.

“I guess you don't like dogs around?”

“Oh, I don't mind them, it's just whether they mind me or not. I've noticed dogs don't usually like bikes.”

“They won't keep you up, so I wouldn't worry much about that. And yeah, I think that'd be alright with me.”

He had no preference for where I should put my tent and went back inside. A wire fence lined the yard, serving as a barrier between grass and corn fields. On the yard's southern side, a broad oak tree grew, with an old tire swing dangling down on a rope from a middle bough. I got all set up under this branch umbrella and put together my stove to cook the mac and cheese I'd got from a grocery in the last town. The dogs, once they'd seen me settle in, ceased their barking just like he'd said, and so they went back to their rest under the front stoop.

Six thirty and I awoke as the first thin, pale traces of light were streaming out from the eastern horizon onto the radial clouds. I wavered groggily inside my tent, with eyes half open, sitting up in my sleeping bag waiting for the bottom dregs of sleep to drain from my tired head.

Started boiling some water for cooking up breakfast and the first dog I'd met the night before snooped by, sniffing around my tent, with her muzzle sweeping the dewy grass. I dropped a brick of noodles into the pot to cook and the dog's ears suddenly perked, her head snapped upward with eyes intense toward the road, then she shot off. I looked over to see what she'd run off to. At a power pole's base she stopped her rush, planted her four paws out firm into the weeds, pointed eyes up and got to barking. A big old raccoon was fleeing quickly up the trunk and sat down on the cross beam upon reaching the top, its ring tail hanging off behind and mask eyes glaring down at the dog past its paws, as they gripped the beam. The dog's sister jumped up from under the stoop and came charging soon as she caught what happened, and rendezvoused in the ditch, joining in with her own vigorous barking like it was she who'd treed the raccoon. They went on like this for a bit over ten minutes.

Eventually they lost patience and went off wandering, but they each kept a keen eye on the power pole. I started lapping up breakfast. Once all had been clear for a while, the raccoon shimmied down the pole, face first. The dogs watched and then charged full speed onto it with all fury when it had reached the thick weeds at the bottom. They chased the raccoon around, fighting it back and forth in a circle with vicious growling and a flurry of snarls between them. It tried to retreat from the dogs back up the power pole, but one of the dogs jumped and caught its left hind leg in her teeth. She gripped tight and tore the raccoon down with all her weight while the other one went at its right side. Downed, biting, and clawing at the dogs, the raccoon tried up the pole again and got pulled off by whatever they could get grip of with their jaws. It tried once more and then got bit hard between its stomach and left hind leg by the more ferocious of the two dogs, but finally, laboriously, it broke free from the canine's teeth, and managed to climb outside their short reach. With a severe limp in the left leg, it slowly ascended the trunk to its perch at the pole top. Tired and defeated it stayed there this time even after the dogs had left. The raccoon's energy flagged entirely, its motions ceased and it no longer breathed. It remained, still at the top of the power pole and I went off for my morning ride with an excitement and a slight tinge of homesickness wisping away.