I had certain expectations for the walk from West Branch. A quick perusal of the route made it appear that I would be following some sort of rail trail the majority of the way. And maybe that will be the case someday! Instead, my expectations were defied, almost from the start. The Hoover Nature Trail leads out of West Branch, but before long it evaporated, left to nature’s overeager reclamation efforts. When the trail first deteriorated into a weedy embrace, I shrugged, rerouted, and looped my way back around, to where the gps offered hope that things might clear up. They did not clear up. I rerouted again. The third time, I was persuaded by the gps that it wouldn’t be so bad. Indeed, I could see tire tracks cutting through the weeds, stoking my optimism that I wouldn’t have to zigzag my way through the corn all day.
Well, dear reader, I should have kept with the zigzagging. The tire tracks, sure enough, fizzled out in what once might have been a clearing, and at that point my stubbornness kicked in, propelling me forward. I suspect I was on a game trail for a bit, as it was navigable enough, and moving in something approximating the appropriate direction, that I carried on. Until, that is, fallen trees turned the faint footpath into an obstacle course. But now the stubbornness was in high dudgeon, refusing any command other than “onward,” and thus I limbo’d my way through the wreckage, peeling off brambles as they sought to pull me deeper into the weeds. Even when I finally emerged, somehow no worse for the wear, the final 50 meters to pavement were packed with waist high, dew-coated grass, soaking me through to mid-section.
The point is that assumptions, combined with a severe stubbornness and accompanying refusal to reconsider available evidence, can lead one into trouble.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the assumptions that people in Portland, and probably people on the coasts more broadly, must carry about Iowa and Iowans. Corn, of course. Low-scoring college football teams. Ghosts playing baseball. But more to the point, a steadfast conservatism that I suspect many in my neck of the woods would associate with all manner of harmful isms. In their mind’s eye, I bet no small share of Portlanders would imagine a parade of Trump flags flying down the highways.
By contrast, I’ve barely seen any Trump signs or flags as I’ve walked through these opening stages in Iowa. One or two per town, max. None in West Branch (where, in fact, I saw a Black Lives Matter sign instead, along with a rainbow sign in front of the library). In tiny Morse, I saw a large Biden/Harris flag, only my second piece of pro-Biden signage on the trip thus far. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. West Branch is split between Johnson and Cedar Counties. Johnson actually went 70% for Biden in 2020, making it a true liberal hotbed. Iowa as a whole went 53% for Trump and 45% for Biden in 2020. I know the headline focuses on Trump easily carrying the state, but stop and think about that for a second–forty-five percent of Iowans voted for Joe Biden. Some very aggressive rounding would make that a 50/50 split!
Now, admittedly, I suspect few Portlanders would be surprised to learn that the small town of Solon’s annual festival is known as Solon Beef Days, with Main Street closed off for a city-wide barbeque. I beat the beef, but arrived in time for the town parade, similar in many regards to what I witnessed in Oxford, with all kinds of community members trolling through the downtown on all manner of vehicles, tossing candy into the cheering crowds. Unlike Oxford, this parade wove through residential streets, and locals were packed onto the lawns, having a great time.
What caught my eye, though, was a modest lot just before town, with a sign marking it as the “Solon Prairie.” “Tall-grass prairie,” the sign read, “covered more than 28 million acres of the Iowa landscape before settlement by early pioneers and today there is less than 1/10 of 1% remaining. It is the most endangered plant community in North America.” As the American Discovery Trail led me on a circuitous but lovely route westward out of Solon, I passed through more recovered prairie land, skirting the edge of Lake Macbride.
There is a persistent belief among liberals that Republicans and conservatives are anti-environment. And certainly, the strident resistance to climate change has unfortunately become powerful evidence in favor of that claim. Major corporations have also taken advantage of meager regulation in some states–I’m thinking about petrochemical companies in the Gulf and fracking companies in Appalachia–to cash in at great environmental cost. For that reason, I’m sure, Portlanders would be surprised to see initiatives towards environmental restoration unfolding in a state like Iowa.
Conservatives, of course, tend to earn their livelihoods off the land at a higher rate than liberals, and that gives them a vested interest in matters of sustainability. (One of my favorite article titles ever is “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living” by Richard White, an environmentalist.) Margins are tight; family farms are on the decline. They can’t afford waste. Unfortunately, in many cases it’s also hard to afford innovation. But it’s impossible to walk through here and hold to any claim that suggests people here don’t love the outdoors. From Solon to Cedar Rapids, I was surrounded by bicyclists, riding merrily along the cement track. (And that’s while Iowa’s biggest statewide cycling race, Ragbrai, kicked off to the west.) I passed by an ATV course, where vehicles were careening off jumps and churning up quite the dust storm. Boats were out on Lake Macbride, with plenty of fishing going on. The golf course before Solon was packed. And imagine if I had been here during hunting season!
And in the midst of that, Iowans are part of a larger-scale area to save the prairie. A Des Moines Register article from June 2022 spotlights the initiative, spearheaded locally by the Iowa Prairie Network, to protect what remains while replanting where possible. Knowing nothing about this, I wondered about the practical benefits. Sure, it sounds nice and romantic to preserve what was lost, but are there arguments in favor of this beyond the principle of preservation? The article notes that, “The removal of native prairie plants like big bluestem, butterfly milkweed and pale purple coneflower has resulted in a loss of migratory birds and other beneficial pollinators such as monarch butterflies and bees.” As such, more prairie grass will support crop growth and biodiversity in the region. I was struck more, though, by work done at Iowa State on integrating “prairie strips” into rowcrops, like corn and soybeans. What they’ve found is really important: “converting 10 percent of a crop field to strategically placed prairie strips could result in the reduction of 95 percent of sediment, 90 percent of the phosphorus and 84 percent of the nitrogen from overland flow of surface water.” Because prairie grass roots plunge far deeper into the soil, they help to combat erosion and absorb rainfall. With extreme weather events on the rise, this seems even more valuable. Promoting environmental protections out of a general principle of it being the “right thing to do” is all well and good, but the green movement is going to be far more successful in these areas if it can thread that needle between laudable protections and productive self-interest, and this seems like a perfect example of striking that balance.
The walk into Cedar Rapids winds along the Cedar River, announcing its arrival into the city with one of the more unusual acts of recycling I’ve encountered. Behold, the biggest landmark in Cedar Rapids: Mount Trashmore! The name couldn’t be more appropriate. In the 1800s, this was a quarry; the city took over control in 1965 and logically enough transformed it into a landfill. Once filled in 2006, the massive trash pile was sealed with a four-foot clay cap, sprinkled with prairie seeds. Now, if you’ve ever had a seemingly-full garbage can, you know that there’s always at least a little more room, if you just shove down hard enough. Similarly, the landfill was reopened in 2008, until finally, seriously this time, it was closed off for good in 2013. Now, it’s capped off with a scenic viewpoint, from which the whole spread of Cedar Rapids can be enjoyed.
The walk through Cedar Rapids continued to challenge assumptions that coastal liberals might have about Iowa. Next to Mount Trashmore sits the Czech Village, where part of the city’s diverse history is celebrated–including a very impressive National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. Across the river stands the African American Museum of Iowa. While I wasn’t able to visit the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art–having a morning free to stroll through a city is great; having that be a Sunday morning is less so–the whole downtown is filled with art, including a large piece dedicated to the American Discovery Trail.
I paused soon after, as I saw streets blocked off and a police presence. “Is something happening downtown today?”, I asked. “We’re having a pizza and beer run,” she explained, “where the participants eat a slice of pizza and drink a beer while running a mile through downtown. “That sounds like you’re going to have a lot of vomit,” I offered. The other man cheerfully acknowledged this, but noted that most of that is concentrated towards the other end of the course. I walked onward.
As I worked my way out of Cedar Rapids on the Cedar River Trail, I took note of one more sign, calling for people to “Protect the Trout in the Watershed of McLoud Run, Iowa’s Only Urban Trout Stream,” complete with a list of practical suggestions for how people might accomplish that.
As for accomplishing the goal of pushing back on some of these pernicious assumptions? Maybe reading about it can help, but I’m not convinced that there’s a more effective way of accomplishing it than getting proximate to places of difference, where one of your all-but-inevitable conclusions is likely to be that similarities are abundant.
