I scale Iowa's western rim, climbing and rappelling Interstate 29, north to LeMars then south to Missouri Valley. Harvest is in full swing, everything moving. Rail cars, mounded with corn, creak and sway among the stubbled fields, glinting brilliant blue in the unfiltered sun. The autumn sacrament is being celebrated. For the first time since moving to Tennessee twenty-five years ago, I am near home on a dry, gold October day.

Recent months have strung together like boxcars for me, my calendar a steady stream of arrivals, departures, PowerPoint presentations, and meetings that last longer than they need to. When I miss my flight from Omaha to Nashville, I am told I can drive to Kansas City and catch a later flight. So, re-renting the same car I have just turned in, I rejoin the caravan jostling toward the Missouri line.

I scale Iowa's western rim, climbing and rappelling Interstate 29, north to LeMars then south to Missouri Valley. Harvest is in full swing, everything moving. Rail cars, mounded with corn, creak and sway among the stubbled fields, glinting brilliant blue in the unfiltered sun. The autumn sacrament is being celebrated. For the first time since moving to Tennessee twenty-five years ago, I am near home on a dry, gold October day.

Recent months have strung together like boxcars for me, my calendar a steady stream of arrivals, departures, PowerPoint presentations, and meetings that last longer than they need to. When I miss my flight from Omaha to Nashville, I am told I can drive to Kansas City and catch a later flight. So, re-renting the same car I have just turned in, I rejoin the caravan jostling toward the Missouri line.

I have tried to convince myself that there is a flow to this type of living, that the numbing cadence of business travel is the natural order of things. After awhile, I find that one can actually begin to draw comfort from discomfort — the Stockholm syndrome of contemporary life. Repetition becomes an anesthetic. Inconveniences, familiar traveling companions.

Glancing at the dashboard clock, I gauge how much time I have. Barring a flat, there is time to grab a slice of pizza, fill my gas tank, locate the rental car return and ride the Avis bus to the terminal. There is time for all of that — and maybe more.

I find myself imagining what more might entail.

East of Exit 10, Iowa Highway 2 shoots arrow-straight into Fremont County, before ricocheting up the side of a bluff. On a whim, I decide to see where it leads and, in the process, discover Waubonsie State Park.

Nosing into a graveled area, I get out of my car and immediately feel like an alien dressed in a gray suit, starched white button-down and club tie, crunching dry leaves under my wingtips. Finding the picnic table furthest from the road, I resolve to sit still — but I struggle. Mile markers continue to flash by in my mind; spreadsheets display themselves in sequential order while my petulant cell phone continually demands an audience. I finally turn it off.

After sitting quietly for a time, I hear a sigh. Someone exhales in the soft, October sun. It is my own breathing. A breeze whispers by, insects drone and a tractor chugs somewhere out along a distant, green terrace until all sounds gradually soften into one padded, ambient hum. A deep settling comes and, with it, remembrance of what I have always known — that all sounds come from one sound.

Then, an immense hush gathers in the Missouri River valley below me, rushes up the hill through the trees, rising a hundred feet aloft before sweeping off to the north. I am left here in its wake, stilled and yielded, left here in the unmediated presence of an Iowa autumn afternoon.

In "My Antonia", Willa Cather writes of the happiness of being "dissolved into something complete and great." Now, hidden away in the southwest corner of the state, I enter that same boundlessness, welcoming sweet dissolution, free again and fully restored.

After an hour lived out of time and with my spirit newly-settled, I re-enter the more immediate. Accelerating back onto I-29, I continue the journey, reluctantly re-attaching myself to the umbilical mechanism that dispenses gasoline, cash and French fries.

Having tasted both light and air, I again bow to the tyranny of the urgent. Is there an ATM at the Rock Port exit? A McDonald's?

Then I remember. It doesn't matter. I have just been fed.