Planetary Stories Project

"To Act Globally, Think Locally – Through Stories"

Black Earth Institute

Place: Red Haw Lake, Iowa, USA

Excerpt from Here
By Robin Montgomery Kennedy

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            Across the water I can distinguish the heart shaped leaves of the redbud trees along the shore of Red Haw Lake. I recall this landscape in April before the green appeared. Tiny blossoms budded from the bare slender branches. The blooms are so small they bloom into blotches of color without distinct shape. When the water’s smooth and silky, they reflect the illusion of pink cumulous clouds floating. In a good year, when the redbuds climax, it is as if Monet has mixed the hues of pink and lavender himself, and dabbed the water’s edge from his palette.

            The sun radiates onto my bare legs and arms, glistens off the ripples of the water, scintillates across the surface of the lake. I feed on light. I am a sun worshipper. Despite the hole in the ozone and the danger of skin cancer, to me, it is a sacrilege to spend the daylight indoors submerged in work, hiding from the sun, locked in windowless buildings and cubicles like thousands of people do in contemporary society each and every day. Sunlight and God are intrinsically connected in my mind.

            It’s seventy degrees, not a cloud anywhere. The distant hum of wheels on the highway can’t dilute the constant rubbing of forewing, the sensual rhythmic song of crickets in the grass. A continuous gentle breeze caresses the lake, cooled by the water as it crosses from the south.

            Despite my usual ambivalence about living in a small Iowa town, poetry surrounds me here. Surprisingly, I feel a natural part of this landscape, finally free to explore and contemplate my complex feelings about this place. When I’m outside in the warmth of the sunshine, especially on a gorgeous day like today, I soften, extend my limbs into the sunshine, and join in life. I begin to anticipate new possibilities right in front of me that I never knew existed. The simplicity of the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

            I have often longed to move from here, from small town Iowa, felt isolated and trapped in this rural setting, silenced and stifled by the same homogenous, unintriguing places, felt ready to spring from the trap with one foot securely caught in place. I have lived in Iowa all my life and often wondered why. But now I am taking to heart H. D. Thoreau’s order to. “Think of the consummate folly of attempting to go away from here! When the constant endeavor should be to get nearer and nearer here.” Thoreau’s words, and this sumptuous day make me question how much I miss every other day, how much movement, life and wonder I fail to see in the everyday places I inhabit. Instead of struggling to pull out of the trap, I’ve decided I should stop resisting, and examine my surroundings more intimately.

            Thoreau recommends, “You need to sit still in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.” He believes you have to be looking for the scarlet oaks in the woods of brown November; the partridge camouflaged by their color among the leaves, playing dead; or the otter which grows to be four feet long, before you are able to see them. Settled here on this slope of grass, overlooking the lake, following Thoreau’s advice, I’m free to play with his thoughts, and absorb the day and the sunshine.

Robin Montgomery Kennedy lived in Iowa all her life, until she recently relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico where she is a freelance writer. She worked as a surgical technologist for over twenty years before returning to earn degrees in English and writing. Robin has taught college writing and speech for the past ten years and has published literary essays and travel articles. 

Send her email: robinetics@yahoo.com