My mother is never far from my mind. This weekend was a little difficult, I was really missing her. Sundays are
the hardest because we used to try to get out and do something fun together
before she became too sick to leave the house anymore. This past Sunday was a beautiful
day, and it got me to thinking about some photos I took the day after her
funeral. I had taken a drive that day to her favorite places before heading
home. I guess I wasn’t quite read to begin life without her just yet. So I
traveled about that day. One of those places was the Loess Hills.
She loved those hills,
having grown up in them, and she love to go to an overlook in the hills, where you could see for miles.
There she would always recite to me the history of their geology. She would
tell me how this particular chain of Loess is unlike any other in the country.
“When you think of Iowa and Nebraska,” she would say, “you think of flat plains
and rolling fields of corn. But here, we are standing over 200 feet above the
plains, on one of only two places like
this in the entire world” She would proceed to tell me again how only in China
are there a chain of hills like this, formed during the Ice Age, when
glaciers advanced down into the mid-continent of North America, grinding
underlying rock into a fine powder-like sediment called "glacial
flour." She would recite again as
she had every time we visited that place that as temperatures warmed, the
glaciers melted and enormous amounts of water and sediment rushed down the
Missouri River valley and the sediment was eventually deposited on flood plains
downstream, creating huge mud flats. She would go on, talking about prevailing
winds, blowing in a cycle for thousands of years, creating dunes and
eventually, the hills we stand on today. She talked of the creatures that once
roamed these beautiful hills, now extinct and of the first peoples who roamed
these hills as evident in the artifacts found all around. Then, she would stop,
and listen to the sounds…..we would listen together in the silence….only the
sounds of birds singing in their treetop homes and the whispering of the wind
through those beautiful rises. We would
smell the air, and take in the beauty around us.
The Loess Hills are a rare and unusual landform, but they are
not permanent; loess terrain is dynamic and rapidly evolving. The Loess
Hills of Iowa are extremely fragile. They have one of the highest erosion rates
in the U.S.. Erosion from rainfall and flooding removes loess from the hills
and redeposits it on the flood plain from which it came, and the clearing of
some of the land for agriculture has accelerated this erosion.
My mom was a master naturalist, long before that idea had a
name, and had a deep appreciation and
love for nature and for it’s history. She worried about the future of places
like this, and if they would be here for future generations to enjoy. She once
said to me that we need nature to live not just physically but spiritually.
“Nature feeds our spirit,” she would say. “In nature, we can get a glimpse of
the majesty and wonder of Our Creator.”
I know she was right. I was oh so lucky to grow up with a woman who
instilled in me her love of God’s earth and to appreciate it’s beauty.
Because of her, I can recognize a bird by it’s song, and name
countless wildflowers and native vegetation. I can sit in silence, alone in the
hills, and feel close to The One who created it all.
When I am lonely for her voice, her touch, her smile, I know
I can go to those hills, and feel her presence. I know I will find comfort
there, I can feel God’s presence in places like those hills better than I can
any place else on earth. I can hear His voice, and, I can hear my mother’s
voice too, echoing in my mind, telling me once again the stories of the land,
and I am comforted.
