Traveling the highways through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and into Ohio over the last two days, I have been aware of the fields that bookend our drive. On each side of the road stands acre after acre of corn and soybeans. I was reminded of the greeting card that offers the words: Congratulations! You are outstanding in your field. The image is usually a field with one person standing alone in a field of identical items. Those items change depending on the intention of the card.

I witnessed field after field of corn. Now I know nothing about corn…its growing patterns, its different types. But what I observed is that certain fields had red tassels and other fields had golden tassels. Driving along it was like moving through a chorus line of tall red-heads on one side and equally as tall blonds on the other. I imagined them in a kick line of dance, Rockettes-style, competing across the asphalt divide.

Sprinkled among the corn was, of course, soybeans. Shorter, brilliant green, they seemed to pale in their dramatic impact on the horizon. Every now and then, however, a stray corn seed had flown through the air and planted itself in amongst the soybeans. Without the benefit of cross-pollination(I do know this much), they had not grown to maturity but they were certainly taller than the field of green in which they stood. They were truly….out standing.

And then at one point my son said: "Look, Mom. Sunflowers!" It was true. There they were. The Queen of Flowers standing in all their marvelous beauty facing the rays of the Sun. An entire field of yellow ecstasy. Outstanding!

Someplace along the road in Indiana, a moving truck had lost a part of its cargo. A rocking chair sat quietly beside the road, flanked by red-heads on one side and blonds on the other. It looked like a good spot to observe the dance of late summer. If someone had been sitting there witnessing to it all, I don’t think I would have been surprised. It seemed like the right thing to do. Outstanding!