Flyover Country

I come from flyover country, that geographic slur for a place better not to set foot, but to jet over obliviously, thousands of feet in the air. That is, the Midwest. Flat, boring, nothing to see or do. Cows and corn. One of the “I” states, as my New England-born and bred neighbor says, lumping Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois into one giant landmass, like the ancient cartographers’ view of the New World.. That last lump, Illinois, is where I was born and grew up. And though I’ve now lived half my life in Massachusetts, deep down, Illinois is home.

If you always fly over the Midwest, you will never drive past fields of wheat and corn, waving in a mesmerizing sheen that stretches to the horizon. You won’t be dazzled by the sunrises and sunsets that are the gift of a wide open sky. You won’t smell the rich, black, freshly upturned soil in spring, or wonder at the rolling Mississippi, a mile wide in my part of the state, so broad and powerful that every time I see it, I still recall my parents’ stern warning: Don’t Swim in the River.

You have to spend time in the Midwest to appreciate its history as well. The Native American civilization at Cahokia Mounds was once more populous and advanced than any other in North America. Immigrants came from every corner of the world: Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Poland, to name a few, contributing to vibrant cultures—and epic beer festivals. I once lived in a town settled by Swiss farmers, where wooden cutouts of the red and white Swiss flag still adorned the houses. In Illinois, we had steamboats, union activism, the World War II boom, and Lincoln. Always Lincoln. On a recent visit, I stopped at a town square for a closer look at a curious statue. I knew it was Lincoln from his top hat, but he was leaning on an umbrella, a satchel beside him. He had stayed in the town’s hotel en route to a courthouse, the plaque said, and arrived in the rain.

I’m not blind to the downside of the Midwest. Sprawl, factory farms, economic decline—the same story across much of the U.S. I also know that until I lived in New England, I was as uninformed about the region as my neighbor was about the Midwest: I would probably have mixed up Vermont and New Hampshire on a map. But isn’t that the way: you need to live in a place to get to know it. Or at least, you need to do more than fly over, gazing remotely out the window at the checkerboard fields below.

I doubt I will have inspired many people to jump in their cars for a road trip to the Midwest. It’s a long way, after all. But if we realize that no place deserves blanket dismissal, that every destination offers discovery, beauty, even awe, we’ll make progress toward understanding what the human love of home really means.