I live in Iowa.

I have had the pleasure of living in and visiting many beautiful places in my 26 years of life.  As a child, I fell asleep to the sound of a chorus of spring peepers and the occasional hoot of an owl. I actually have an alarm clock with a "forest" sound setting that is eerily similar to those spring nights of home. One morning I was awoken by the sound of crunching while living in the Hoh Rainforest of Washington. I looked out my window to find a large elk butt blocking my view. In West Texas, I never knew if the Guadalupe Mountains would be standing tall when I walked out of the door or if  wispy clouds would be hiding them from my sight.  Oftentimes storm clouds would build all day and explode in the afternoons with monstrous thunderstorms. The dry, compacted earth could not swallow the sheets of rain fast enough and it  transformed the desert into a giant kiddie pool, if only for a few minutes. While I studied in Cape Town, I had an amazing view of Table Mountain from my window and my apartment complex was surrounded with exotic plants like birds of paradise and a shrub that looked like it would produce bananas if given the right attention.

Despite the endless memories I have of these places and countless others, I have a sad confession. I have always had an awful case of "the-grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side" syndrome. Growing up I could not wait to live somewhere that allowed me to have neighbors and cable television.

When I lived in the Hoh I felt claustrophobic and trapped by the idea of the remoteness. The moss and Sitka spruce seemed to entangle themselves around my chest and it always felt hard to breathe when I was in that valley. I knew it took 12 minutes to drive far enough down the road to where on a good day I might get a cell phone signal, and where my mail or the occasional package would be dropped off. It would take at least another half hour to get to the Ace Hardware-Outfitter-Grocery combination store where I could buy People magazine. I spent all week looking forward to the 5 hour drive along Lake Crescent, through clear cuts and across Puget Sound to Seattle and civilization. I had never felt better than when my car was parked at suspicious angles pointing straight into the water on the car ferry while I let the moist air play with my hair and I looked towards the lights of the city. I knew that those lights held natural grocery stores, Thai restaurants, friends, but most importantly a strong AT&T signal.

South Africa nearly ruined me. A couple weeks after I arrived, itchy red bumps began to appear over my body. I went to the pharmacy and they gave me lotion for scabies and told me to scald my bedding and beloved stuffed animals (Bean and Euklee) in hot water. When that did not work I made an appointment with a foreign doctor, who had a sign out front that simply said "Surgery." He told me I likely had fleas. My African friends assured me this was a normal occurrence amongst college aged kids there. Meanwhile, my mother frantically sent a care package across the Atlantic and the equator, that was stuffed with a plastic sheet to enclose my mattress and concoctions that killed anything that might like to feast on dead skin cells. I sprinkled a blue powder along the edge of my bedroom that I found in a shop near my place that is likely prohibited in the U.S. for its toxicity, but promised to exterminate fleas. Soon after my bumps started changing into scabs and then scars, the cockroaches appeared... I had a countdown written in my planner of how many days I would be on that strange, hostile continent long before I hit the 100 day mark. I stuffed myself with Cadbury Mint Crisp bars, Xanax, and bottles of Savannah Dry to help pass the time.

It is always the same story. I dream up the dream of dreams in my imaginative head. I am going to move to Texas and be a strong, fearless Park Ranger that just looks at rattlesnakes right to make them skirt away. I'll get killer cowboy boots and all the locals will fall in love with me. Sometimes the dreams nearly came true, but it was never enough. I longed for home so much I would make myself sick. I would shut out the opportunity to fall in love with a new place. All those beautiful sunsets but they didn't feel beautiful enough without the people I loved. A few days after I get home and my body is backed up from eating too many squeaky cheese curds and I remember that Wisconsin always smells like cow manure, I start missing wherever I just came from.

These days I reside in the state of Iowa. It isn't really known for anything other than corn. There isn't much to do and there aren't any mountains to greet me when I wake up. If I want to camp somewhere scenic I'll probably drive for hours and once the ice melts it converts itself instantly into stifling humidity. The funny thing is that I am happy here. No, not for the long term, but day to day without thinking about it too hard, I am happy. If I start missing home, I drive 5 1/2 hours and about the time I start getting annoyed with home, I drive the 5 1/2 hours back. I can dream about the banana slugs of the Hoh, the roadrunners of Texas and the giraffes of South Africa without actually having to go there. When the day dreams get too intense, I can open my eyes and drive 2 minutes to buy People magazine. I never do though. I have a garden to pick green beans out of, a dog to teach to play frisbee, a studio to paint/sew/bead/stamp/journal in, and a man that I love more than anything else in the world. We whine about how awful Iowa is but I know it could be worse. The soil is really good here and so the grass is actually quite green.