The Rainbow View

The Underground Railroad

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:34:41 -0500

There are at least two homes in Southwestern Iowa preserved because of their history as Underground Railway stations...both homes of pastors of the Congregational Church. This one is near the teeny town of Lewis. Fully restored by locals with great pride in their legacy of freedom, this home had a false cupboard in the basement behind which fugitives could hide and rest in safety.
People escaping slavery were sheltered and guided from home to home toward Chicago; then directly northward into Canada. The whole journey took about three months. Iowans were fiercely determined that no more states would enter the Union as slave states.
For example, another Congregational minister in the town of Tabor, Iowa not only offered protection to refugees in his home, he hid 200 Sharps rifles in his basement and a cannon in his barn - ready to take up arms rather than allow Kansas Territory to become a slave state.
It is difficult now to truly appreciate the risk of this illegal and dangerous network, and the courage of those who helped strangers toward freedom. In this home, according to local tradition, John Brown preached several times before his courageous raid on Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. Among those who died with him were two of his sons, while another escaped to continue the struggle. I read that the controversy over John Brown’s raid and subsequent execution, plus his defiant and prophetic final words, helped bring the whole nation into awareness of the horrors of slavery, resulting in our Civil War.
No one really knows how many people escaped to freedom through the Underground Railway, but estimates run as high as 100,000. Others say no, the dangers were so extreme that number must be too high.

The Loess Hills of Iowa (and China)

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 15:02:27 -0500

I entered the Loess Hills through the town of Hamburg, SE Iowa, about one week ago now and have been immersed in traveling through them ever since. Not easy to find that little bluff road, but Hamburg has a drugstore where they still have penny candy (up to three cents now, with inflation), and an old-time soda fountain; I got a chocolate malt. There also I got good directions from the friendly druggist and his wife, and tips to avoid hitting all the wildlife there; the deer are so thick there are almost herds of them, and the wild turkeys all are raising babies who cannot decide which side of the road they want to be on. To avoid bumping anybody, you just crawl your car along the Bluff Road...
By the way, everybody here seems to have their own way of pronouncing “loess,” but apparently the officially correct way is to rhyme it with bus. I think the word is from German, meaning ‘loose.’
Then, Waubonsie Park is just a few miles in that road, and a good thing too because it was late by the time I found my way into the Loess Hills. Rural Iowa seems to have a culture of friendliness, and this park was no exception because as soon as I started to set up my tent three people and a dog named Petey showed up to help. Petey had a very special story; he is a beautiful boxer, rescued from abuse six years ago (Petey is now 10). So he walks with a limp and a skip where arthritis has set into a broken left hind leg that never healed right, but his beautiful heart is full of love for Jennifer and Jake who rescued him and for all the rest of the world, too.
Waubonsie park is high on a bluff of the Loess Hills, with an overlook to tell you how the hills formed; first long-ago glaciers ground underlying rock to dust, and their meltwater carried this glacial till down to the plains beside the Missouri River. Then the westerly winds came up; and after these winds blew for 132,000 years, they had piled this rock dust, or loess, into bluffs along the Missouri River that are 200 feet high and two to ten miles across. These bluffs are so unique that world over, a parallel landform is found only in China, along the valley of the Yellow River.
Native Americans maintained these prairies in their natural, fully dynamic state; Anglo-Europeans have not. However, local folks are now collaborating now to reverse the disruption to the once-thriving ecosystem, and find a new way forward. That happens through education, and also buying up key lands (from willing sellers only) and then applying your best science plus your finest intuitive awareness.
Go, Iowa!!

Amber Waves of Grain...

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:04:42 -0500

The splendor of a continental heartland, that is what I probably expected in Iowa...but in part perhaps because I have sixty-six years of life experience now, every place I travel in this journey of 53 days and counting seems to reveal unexpected, hidden mystery and beauty.
I travel with just a tent and sleeping bag, motels seem all but unaffordable these days...maybe once every couple of weeks or so. But there develops over time a tremendous sense of closeness to the land, almost a communion of knowing sometimes...
So these notes will hopefully get launched while I am camped here in the green and shady city park in the tiny town of Pisgah, Iowa. Here the state has set up a beautifully done visitor center to document efforts to conserve (as well as restore) Iowa’s splendorous Loess Hills, with native prairie and unique forestlands.
The Loess Hills, running beside the Missouri River Valley of Iowa’s western border...so utterly unique on Planet Earth that their like is found only in China, along the Yellow River Valley there...
I am thinking to tell what I have learned from these hills, and then perhaps go back and pick up some the the wonderful (to me, anyway...) events and places of the earlier meanderings...and I think there is a button you can push if you would like to know when new entries are ready...
So I look forward to sharing this journey with you.
Virginia Hoyt
Flaming Rainbow Books